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The music of the Oblivion Ensemble remains as elusive and surreal as the ever-shifting cast of musicians and performers who participate, knowingly, or unknowingly in their work.

Drawing extreme elements of electronic, acoustic, noise, and industrial musics, the sonic tapestries of Oblivion Ensemble are carefully woven with unique improvisations, excerpts, and layered samples and loops; the result is dark, beautiful and intense, inspiring conflicting emotions and aural hallucinations.

Founding members are John Bergstrom and Brannon Hungness (aka Figure). Hungness is a virtuoso experimental guitarist and composer, frontman of the progressive-noise-art-rock band Kill Myself On Monday, a former member of the Glenn Branca Ensemble and the band Hammerhead. Bergstrom is a concert-hall composer and computer music gearhead with a classical music pedigree, having studied at the Eastman School of Music.

Since 1989 Oblivion Ensemble has been recording musics and orchestrating performances that stretch the imagination. The release of "Nightmare: Sinistrotorse" (Complacency, 1995), the first act of a "virtual" opera, demonstrated their ability to traverse disparate musical styles in a single work. With each live performance the cast of characters and thematic elements changed, with each showing a unique view ofthe work was emphasized. Of special note were 2 sold-out performances at the Pyramid Art Center in Rochester NY, where a 90-minute spectacle of 30 performers realized the opera in quadraphonic, electro-acoustic brilliance.

Oblivion Ensemble performs live in many different configurations; sometimes as a duo with Hungness and Bergstrom, at other times with varied combinations of trumpeteer Mark Kirschenmann, percussionists Doug Wallace and Primo Mussemeci. Many other guest performers have appeared and recorded with Oblivion Ensemble, including Elliot Sharp, Rebecca Karpoff, and Tony Levin.

Each performance is unique; excerpts of recorded works are realized in live arrangements, expanded, improvised upon ... often while being recorded, for source material for future works.

Oblivion Ensemble's latest published work is "Seraphim Hallucino", (Malignant Records, 2006). The album begins where "Nightmare: Sinistrotorse" left off, a continuous piece divided only by 23 CD track markers. At it's source are strange, electro-acoustic improvisations of percussion, trumpet, voice, synthesizers and guitar. These improvisations are sculpted and sampled, twisted and turned, shaped into building and diminishing moments, and, at times appearing alone, pure and unmodified.

Deeply imbedded in the music are secrets, intertwining themes, voices, imprinted messages - listening to themusic of Oblivion Ensemble with headphones in a darkened room is highly recommended.