Vidna Obmana — The River of Appearance

The River of Appearance is part of Zoharum’s reissue of classic ambient albums from Vidna Obmana. It originally appeared back in 1996 on Projekt Records, and presented the listener with eight examples of lullingly drifting and crystalline ambience that’s bountiful with soothing and serene melody lines. It’s an album, that is largely high with bright and glowing mystery, which never descends to new age bland-ness.

Following the other releases in this series the fold-out digipak features close up monochrome pictures of flowers- this nicely fits in with the other reissues, though it doesn’t really highlight the often glowing and warming feeling of the tracks themselves, and the albums unfold, though when it’s part of a series I can understand why it’s difficult to deviate from what was used before. 

The five tracks here have runtimes between five and eleven minutes- with each painting & setting their mood/ vibe perfectly. We go from brightly tolling and spinning out harmonic simplicity of “The Angelic Appearance”, onto the gently glowing and revolving vibe and string-like glide of “A Scenic Fall”.

Moving into the second half of the record we have the slow teeming ambience-meets-warming sonic wavering’s of “Weaving Clusters”, or the lightly tinkling hazed by rising glow of “Streamers Of Stillness”. With the album playing out with slightly darker simmering ‘n’ drifting grandeur of “The Ominous Dwelling”- which hints at more troubled times ahead, after our largely glowing and bright trip.

It's marvellous to see Zoharum carrying on with this reissue series- and make sure these important and masterful euro- ambient work are back in print once more. There’s no doubt The River of Appearance is one of the brighter and harmonically lighter examples of Vidna Obmana craft- but that does not make it any the lesser of a release, and if you are looking for more positive and warming side of the ambient coin- this a must!.