Product Description
2. Other Transformations
3. Weathering The Gale
4. Treasure Of Stars
The Streams Of Consciousness series is home for Dirk Serries’ gleaming solo ambient work. With over 40 years of sonic experimentation — including his many albums as VidnaObmana — Dirk’s Treasure Of Stars is a return to his trademark melancholic ambient dwellings. Created in real-time on electric guitar and a handful of effects, it’s a shimmering slowflow exploration of textures and emotional states. Transcendent and esoteric soundscapes facilitate moments of solitary reflection.
Projekt’s 2024 release, Streams Of Consciousness Compiled, was such a success with the label’s fanbase that the decision was easily made to return with a new album exclusively recorded for Projekt. The serene tones and expansive – yet mysterious – atmospheres are constructed live solely on the electric guitar. Individual notes and reverberating washes ebb and flow over the course of these longform pieces.
For those who wished VidnaObmana was still around releasing albums, the wait it over. This release invites repeated listenings as one is gently rocked by warm, starlit washes of sound.
Press excerpts from 2024:
• A slowflow inner exploration of sonics and emotional states… Dirk Serries’ homage and return to pure harmonic sonic moments. This music is purely ‘in-the-moment’ ambient.
• The sounds here are gentle ambiance with slow-moving chord patterns, airy textures, and a peaceful mood.
• Despite the apparent simplicity of the music, it resonates deeply on an emotional level, inviting the listener to engage in relaxed, thoughtful introspection.
• 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.
• At times while listening I feel like I’m floating in deep space, at others that I am a piece of driftwood being gently rocked by ocean waves, and at still others it’s as if I’m lying stretched out in the grass, the sun gently warming my face as I watch puffy white clouds slowly drifting by.
• Slow flowing evolutionary washes of sonic color full of warmth and emotion.
Reviews Editor –
From Moors Magazine
An electric guitar and some effects pedals, that’s all Belgian guitarist Dirk Serries needs for his “streams of consciousness” albums recorded in one go, of which Treasure of Stars is the latest. It’s almost unbelievable how little seems to happen and how incredibly exciting this music is at the same time. Ambient, melancholic, softly shifting and captivating, it’s all true, but the mystery is mainly how this music, which at first glance seems “boring”, can still turn out to be so fascinating.
Because if you’re even a slightly attentive listener, you won’t be bored for a minute and you’ll soon be completely swept away in the ambient world of Serries and his magical guitar. Just listen to the fragments I’m playing here and then listen to them a few more times. Then you’ll hear what I mean.
Reviews Editor –
From Dave Aftandilian at Bandcamp
Listening to this album offers one an opportunity to practice non-attachment; to attend carefully to each moment that passes, exploring its unique contours and textures with the wide-eyed wonder of beginner’s mind; but then to let it pass into the next, as it must, without grasping at it frantically. Listening here one simply floats, serene and complete; a part of it all, but shackled to none.
Reviews Editor –
From Exposé
A while back I wrote a few words about Dirk Serries release Streams of Consciousness Compiled on Projekt Archive, a double-length download of eight recordings he made in this ongoing series. Now, one year later, he has released another installment, Treasure of Stars, an introspective, meditative collection of four new pieces of deep listening magnificence. For those who tuned into Serries’ work back in the 90s, when he went by the moniker VidnaObmana, the music in the Streams of Consciousness series approaches the work he did at that time, a very dreamy sound that floats freely in spaces unknown, with some textures held within, one might find these works comparable to Steve Roach’s floating ambient material, at least in a general stylistic sense — Serries’ work is mostly created using guitar, though one may not know unless you listen closely.
All four tracks clock in between fourteen and twenty minutes, leaving the listener with plenty of space for the imagination to wander deep inside the inner spiral or out among the farthest stars. “Soft Rain” opens the program, a warm, beautiful drifting piece that splashes colorful walls of sound on all sides of the listening experience as it proceeds forward; it doesn’t change a lot during its fifteen-plus minute existence, but that’s exactly what soft rain should be — and it’s a perfect title. Next in line is “Other Transformations,” a somewhat darker, knurled piece with strong textural elements that float by in passing; there is a must-see video of this track on Projekt’s Bandcamp page (link below), it’s certainly not what one might expect. In the near-twenty minute “Weathering the Gale,” the feeling is expansive and mysterious, a powerful fountain of night music that flows over the spirit, while the closing title track certainly lives up to its title — one can visualize the stars in the night sky while very subtle insect sounds fill the imagination. The four pieces fit together perfectly, guiding the listener through a sound world that one might find surreal, something suitable for meditation or slumber. -Peter Thelen
Reviews Editor –
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
Reviews Editor –
From Rockerilla
A mantra that accompanies the mind in the most intimate hours of the night. A game of mirrors between sleepy reverberations and chords that melt in the moonlight like incandescent lava. The latest chapter of the Streams Of Consciousness series, Treasure Of Stars, is yet another journey into the dreamlike and evanescent universe of dark-ambient, built over many years of career during the era in which Dirk Serries called himself Vidna Obmana. Today, when the Belgian musician is focused on finding the exit from the labyrinths of free-jazz, it is nice to see him still absorbed in contemplating the stars. Stellar! -Roberto Mandolini
Reviews Editor –
From Ambient Landscape
BREAKING NEWS FROM THE ETHER:
Dirk Serries has once again figured out a way to pull our [ambient] strings!
His latest offering, Treasure of Stars (releasing February 28th), creates a sonic mosaic of intricate ambient sound. Serries at once presents dreamy, melancholy waves of ethereal isolation; wielding his ambient “axe” to build an intangible wall of delicious quietude and dividing intentional spareness from the larger elemental body of enveloping ambience.
“Other Transformations” is the standout track for me personally; with the entire album embodying a sublime reflection of Dirk’s ability to transport the listener’s attention into a personal space of solace.
Beautiful and . . . evocative -Gabulmer