DIRK SERRIES’ compilation of music from his STREAMS OF CONSCIOUSNESS series on Projekt digital has gained a lot of attention and praise. Here’re a few reviews.
The album is still available through the PROJEKT bandcamp site. And mark February 25th in your agenda for ‘TREASURE OF STARS’, a new exclusive Streams Of Consciousness album, for PROJEKT.
AMN reviews :
“In 2007, Dirk Serries wrapped up his long-standing vidnaObmana project, which began two decades earlier as an ambient electronic endeavor influenced by synthesists of the Berlin School. But a few years later he began quietly putting out recordings of this ilk once again, under the moniker Streams of Consciousness. There are a total of 17 albums released so far, including eight in the last year. This compilation consists of about 3 hours of these pieces. The sounds here are gentle ambiance, with slow-moving chord patterns, airy textures, and a peaceful mood. Created spontaneously on guitar run through effects, the music fits the album title. Serries plays in a stream-of-consciousness style and his output can be absorbed in that manner as well. The eight tracks are in the 18-25 minute range and feature lilting tones and expansive – yet mysterious – atmospheres. Individual notes and reverberating guitar washes are immersive but not suffocating. Despite the apparent simplicity of the music, it resonates deeply on an emotional level, inviting the listener to engage in relaxed, thoughtful introspection. Through this prolific project, Serries constructs serene soundscapes that facilitate moments of solitary reflection. He engages with the notion that the notes you do not play can be just as important as the notes that are played, thus using space as an auxiliary instrument. The album comes highly recommended for fans of vidnaObmana, Steve Roach, and the like. Streams Of Consciousness Compiled also serves as an unassuming antidote to an increasingly crazy world.”
EXPOSE reviews :
“We all remember VidnaObmana from the last years of the 20th Century, a floating ambient project alias created by one Dirk Serries, Belgian composer and instrumentalist in 1984, who recorded nearly 100 albums, both solo and in collaboration with like-minded travelers like Steve Roach, Jeff Pearce, Brannan Lane, PBK, Sam Rosenthal, and many others. In 2007 Serries officially retired the VidnaObmana moniker and moved forward using his given name and some new aliases like Fear Falls Burning. One of those new aliases was Streams of Consciousness, which began in earnest in 2013 and continues to this day (2024), bearing an explorative deep ambient drone style created using electric guitar and guitar effects in his home studio, with slow flowing evolutionary washes of sonic color full of warmth and emotion, not at all unlike the works he produced as VidnaObmana. As of this writing, Serries has released 18 albums in the Streams of Consciousness series, all with cryptic numeric titles that seem to indicate the date on which they were recorded. Each of the albums contain two tracks, each roughly the length of an LP side, and those tracks do have English titles, so with 18 albums with two tracks each, to date there should be 36 tracks total, though you won’t find any of them on Serries’ Bandcamp page — instead one needs to search for Streams of Consciousness to find them. Streams of Consciousness Compiled contains eight tracks selected from the ongoing series (only a few were ever produced on physical media in the beginning, and have since been download only), it’s something of an introduction to his ongoing project, which as it turns out is more like a homage to VidnaObmana than most of the other projects that Serries has running currently, so for any listeners who were tuned into his work back in the VidnaObmana days, this eight track sampler (almost three hours of music) should go far to quench your thirst for his brand of dreamy, meditative sounds, and point you in the direction where more can be found.”
IYEZINE reviews :
La qualità del deep ambient e drone di Dirk è sempre molto alta, le composizioni arrivano da pubblicazioni diverse, ma fanno parte di un unico continuum e lo si percepisce benissimo. Dirk Serries è un artista belga, compositore e musicista, uno dei produttori ambient e drone fra i più influenti e capaci della scena europea. “Stream of consciousness compiled” è un progetto per Projekt Records che racchiude una selezione di otto lunghi brani per circa tre ore di deep ambient, drone e viaggi siderali. Gli otto brani sono stati scelti da Dirk facendo una selezione delle diciassette uscite pubblicate su https://streamsofconsciousness.bandcamp.com/ . Tutte le composizioni sono state composte e prodotte dal vivo da Dirk nel suo studio usando una chitarra e tantissimi effetti, e il risultato è davvero notevole. La serie è cominciata nel 2013, e delle prime tre uscite sono stati pubblicati dei vinili in quantità estremamente limitata, per poi continuare la sua vita nella forma digitale. Questa raccolta mostra cosa sia questa meravigliosa collana di uscite deep ambient e drone.
Seguendo da anni la collana ogni uscita prodotta da Dirk è notevole e questa selezione è sicuramente un ottimo punto di ingresso in un qualcosa che vi avvolgerà e si insinuerà dentro la vostra mente, cambiandola in meglio. Serries è uno sperimentatore sonoro da oltre quarant’anni, avendo iniziato nella scena do it yourself belga degli anni ottanta, cominciando nel 1984 il progetto Vidna Obmana con il quale ha cambiato la storia ambient e drone europea e non solo.
Come si può ascoltare qui, la frequenza musicale di Dirk eleva l’animo umano, è un sostrato di luce e di bellezza, e anche le tenebre illuminano. Seguendo linee di chitarra totalmente inusuali ed estranee alla comune nozione della sei corde, si entra in altra quota, fra le nuvole che attraggono e al contempo respingono la luce che arriva dal vuoto, in un vero e continuo flusso di coscienza che abbraccia il tutto partendo dalle parti che lo compongono, arrivando a rompere la divisione e la diversità delle parti. Questo disco non va ascoltato, ci si deve immergere ad occhi chiusi, è quasi una meditazione nel senso più altro della parola, un essere qui ed ora ma a diecimila metri da terra, distantissimi da dove ci troviamo ora. La qualità del deep ambient e drone di Dirk è sempre molto alta, le composizioni arrivano da pubblicazioni diverse, ma fanno parte di un unico continuum e lo si percepisce benissimo. Profondità, bellezza e anche magnificenza, per un’opera che lievita ad ogni ascolto, e che come le cellule germina in continuazione producendo nuove cellule, in un afflato che non è solo musica ma tendenza all’infinito e a risvegliare una parte di noi che è infinita e che fluttua, lontana dal nostro corpo. Non è un lavoro per chi cerca nicchie di genere o appartenenze a qualche genere o scena, qui c’è l’universo nella sua totalità che pulsa.
CHAIN D.L.K. REVIEW :
There are albums you listen to, and then there are albums that listen to you. Dirk Serries’ “Streams of Consciousness Compiled” belongs to the latter category – a collection of ambient driftworks that doesn’t demand attention but rewards surrender. These nearly three hours of shimmering, slow-motion soundscapes are less a “best of” and more a portal into Serries’ post-VidnaObmana meditations, a distilled essence of his decade-long “Streams of Consciousness” series, built entirely in real-time with just an electric guitar and a handful of effects. Serries has spent over 40 years sculpting sound, often navigating the liminal space between presence and absence, between what is played and what is left to dissolve in its own wake. His approach here is a masterclass in restraint. Notes don’t so much ring out as they breathe; they rise and hover, contemplating their own existence before fading into the ether. It’s music in which time itself slows to a near standstill, like sunlight refracting through water, catching brief, fleeting patterns before they are swallowed by the current. The track titles – “Meandering”, “Harmonious Flare”, “The Whispering Scale” – serve as vague coordinates, but they don’t prepare you for the immersive depth of each piece. “Remote Delight” is a lesson in how delay and reverb can bend perception, stretching a single note into something more resembling a memory than a sound. “Solstice of Murmur” unfolds in waves, each one softer than the last, as if it were erasing its own past. “Glow Horizon” feels like floating through the liminal zone between wakefulness and sleep, where recognition and abstraction blur. For those who miss Vidna Obmana, this release is a gentle assurance that the spirit never truly left. If you’ve ever wondered what it would be like to exist as a cloud for an afternoon, “Streams of Consciousness Compiled” is your answer. A weightless, introspective dream of an album, built for those willing to embrace slowness – not as a limitation, but as a form of transcendence.
dirkserries.com 