Band:	Arcana
Album:	Le Serpent Rouge
Style:	Ambient
Release date:	2004

01. In Search Of The Divine
02. Le Serpent Rouge
03. Cathar
04. Under The Sun
05. Amber
06. Seductive Flame
07. Serpents Dance
08. The Passage
09. The Nemesis

This is one of the most interesting albums I've heard this year; the music is pure ambience wrapped in percussive tunes and melodious choirs. The cover says it all; even from that artwork you know you'll be drowned in something out of this world, we can see a beautiful girl with angel wings struggling with an aggressive snake, I don't know why but it fits the music perfectly.

The guys responsible for this are Peter Bjärgö and Stefan Eriksson, both are great musicians indeed; the second name creates otherworldly atmospheres with nothing but percussions, and the first name absorbs the environment with his sequences and audio samples, then we have the choirs?3 voices performing in the most dim and beautiful way, in most times you'll feel drowned in red clouds waiting to bleed rain or something.

The instrumentation is actually marvelous, we can hear drums, bass, cabasa, shakers, bells, cymbals, etc. all used in a magnificent yet mild way; you won't ever hear an instrument drowning another instrument or whatever, everything is in the right place in the right time, every single percussive beat feels more than perfect, everything is meticulously arranged for the listener to feel certain kind of emotions I'm sure of that.

It's really difficult to describe this kind of music, when everything is so surrealistic you can't actually find any words to fit with the explanation. I'll just say this is one of the most beautiful sounds I've heard in many years, ambient music in a really dark way filled with grim passages and shivering feelings.

Highly recommended for the followers of the avant-garde, experimental, or ambient music in general; you'll be transported into another era, surrounded by ferocious characters and haunted by snakes crawling in the dark, this could actually fit correctly in a soundtrack for a movie with a lot of Egyptian themes, damn it I loved this album.

Best Tracks: "Le Serpent Rouge", "Under The Sun", "The Nemesis"