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From KrautNick As part of his “Streams Of Consciousness” series, Antwerp ambient guitarist Dirk Serries takes us to the beach, into space, underwater and on the high seas with Treasure Of Stars, all generated with just the guitar and a few effects devices, all infinitely slow and all infinitely beautiful. Serries recorded this album solo and in one go for the label Projekt Records. A warming escape from everyday life. Just being on the beach is already numbing. The sun sets, blood red, eternal, infinitely long. The waves move at the same speed as a massive mass that is outside, beyond the beach, in an endless movement, a mass whose intention is not to roll out onto the beach, but which simply sways back and forth, extremely slowly. Some surfers are prepared to expose themselves to this movement, they remain on their boards on these waves and celebrate the slowness. Seagulls and pelicans stand in the evening air, the heat of which is only gradually decreasing, satiated, having set off on something like levitation for inner joy alone. Your own breathing adapts to the slowness, you are completely calmed down, looking at the sea, looking at the sun, letting its warmth work on your skin, in your lungs, you feel completely liberated. Somewhere close enough not to get lost, a musician strikes Caribbean chords, one every half minute, sends them through a soft-focus effects device and conjures up the most fitting soundtrack for this completely decelerated life situation. Dirk Serries calls his 15-minute opener “Soft Rain”, the guitar of which, with its sunny, Caribbean surf twang, brings a more radiant relaxation to the inner eyes than soft rain. Serries then leads into “Other Transformations” for 14 minutes, his guitar now sounds split in two, into a higher, almost organ-like version, and a drone-like, mid-range version. The tempo remains the same, slow; a metronome would have trouble striking it at all, not to mention that there are no bars on the entire album. With reverb and lightness, you feel like you are in weightlessness, not in pitch black space, but in dazzling light, surrounded by a benevolent, soul-warming spiritual transcendental entity. With “Weathering The Gale”, Serries seduces listeners to spend the next 20 minutes underwater. The sounds are muted, the sun sends its rays gently through the salty liquid, algae trees snake up from the non-threatening depths and compete in slow motion with the brilliance of the light. It takes a while to understand that you can breathe underwater, that this situation in which you are floating is a gift, a offering, presented simply by the sound of this music. Once again, one seems to hear an organ instead of a guitar, as if someone were playing it in a sunken cathedral, the reverberation chamber of which is amplified, blurred and distributed by the sea. At first it is schools of small fish that move through this darkened cathedral at minimal speed, but they are soon crossed by the Leviathan; the different currents result in dissonances, the light continues to diminish, but don’t worry, the Leviathan moves past, it poses no threat. The Leviathan is not only not threatening, it is even a friend – it takes the listeners back to the surface, to the last quarter of an hour, which belongs to the title track. The gigantic prehistoric animal surges on the open sea, and you surge with it. The sun shines brightly through the slowly evaporating fog, and you feel as though you are in latitudes where spring is approaching. The air is getting fresher, brighter, perhaps there is solid land somewhere nearby, can’t you see butterflies on the horizon, flapping their wings in the morning haze? Serries’ guitar sounds once again in multiple voices, encouraging this time, but still not awakening, but positively stimulating. After such a comprehensively beautiful album, you don’t want to turn to facts. But you have to: Treasure Of Stars is a special edition of the “Streams Of Consciousness” series, which Serries has been feeding with such one-offs at irregular intervals since 2013, usually titled only with the recording date, only the tracks have tangible names. The last part “240112” was released retrospectively on January 1, 2025, the present one was created out of the series. This release also alludes to Serries’ ambient alter ego VidnaObmana, which he launched in 1985 and officially brought back in 2007. A look at that discography makes collectors throw their hands up in despair: He has worked with Klinik and Asmus Tietchens, among others! -Matthias Bosenick
Ambient
