The Surreal Sanctuary

The Surreal Sanctuary is a monumental CD from Vidna Obmana (née Dirk Serries). The disc has seven tracks, and each features Serries showcasing a different instrument, including the human voice. (Jim Cole, an extraordinary overtone singer, is a guest performer on the track "Lamentation.") Serries uses the recycling technique that he and Asmus Tietchens perfected, which involves breaking down a base track and remanufacturing it with different shapes, timbres, and textures. At each step, the music is processed, continuously. It's like processing the process while it's being processed by a process within a process. It is endless and curiously like an endless Frippertronics loop; it just keeps going and going and going, yet it remains interesting. This description sounds like it could apply to dissonant and experimental avant-garde music, but this disc is everything that fans expect of Serries — cutting-edge electronic ambience. This CD will appeal to fans of Steve Roach and Robert Rich, and is essential for all fans of electronic music.