Product Description
2. harmonious flare 24:54
3. remote delight 19:36
4. principal origin 22:30
5. glow horizon 20:01
6. solstice of murmur 23:34
7. weather divide 22:47
8. the whispering scale 18:18
Streams of Consciousness is Dirk Serries’ homage and return (after the closure of vidnaObmana in 2007) to pure harmonic sonic moments. A mix of deep ambient and drone, this collection presents a nearly-3-hour selection of tracks from the 17 releases available. Created in real-time on electric guitar and a handful of effects in Dirk’s home studio, it’s a slowflow inner exploration of sonics and emotional states. Single notes and reverberating washes of guitars ebb and flow over the course of these longform pieces. Begun in 2013, the first three Streams of Consciousness albums were pressed in ultra limited quantities on vinyl. The series then continued digitally.
Some Bandcamp fan quotes:
“Ambient guitar drone at its best from none other than the best.”
“Whatever your definition of bliss is, Dirk Serries has the power to change it forever.”
“From the depths of his inner world to the ears of our sensory world, Dirk Serries is a master at the top of his game. A must have…”
“For me, Dirk Series literally walks on water. He has an amazing talent and uses it well. From his days as vidnaObmana to operating under his own name, the quality of the audio experience has always been exceptional.”
“This is one of those albums where you really begin to question what is more important, the note or the space between the notes. Perhaps it is the SOUND between the notes, the sound of the previously played note fading. Regardless, Dirk Serries paints a very gentle picture of blissful yet slightly lonely place, a place of silent introspection and reflection. Simply fantastic.”
“Sensational drones from the undisputed master of the genre.”
Reviews Editor –
From Chain DLK
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. -Vito Camarretta
Reviews Editor –
From In Your Eyes
The quality of Dirk’s deep ambient and drone is always very high, the compositions come from different publications, but they are part of a single continuum and you can perceive it very well.
Dirk Serries is a Belgian artist, composer and musician, one of the most influential and capable ambient and drone producers on the European scene. Stream of Consciousness Compiled is a project for Projekt Records that includes a selection of eight long tracks for about three hours of deep ambient, drone and sidereal journeys. The eight tracks were chosen by Dirk by making a selection of the seventeen releases published on https://streamsofconsciousness.bandcamp.com/.
All the compositions were composed and produced live by Dirk in his studio using a guitar and tons of effects, and the result is truly remarkable. The series started in 2013, and the first three releases were released on vinyl in extremely limited quantities, and then continued its life in digital form. This collection shows what this wonderful series of deep ambient and drone releases is all about.
Having followed the series for years, each release produced by Dirk is remarkable and this selection is certainly a great entry point into something that will envelop you and creep into your mind, changing it for the better. Serries has been a sound experimenter for over forty years, having started in the Belgian do it yourself scene of the eighties, starting in 1984 the project Vidna Obmana with which he changed the history of ambient and drone in Europe and beyond.
As you can hear here, Dirk’s musical frequency elevates the human soul, it is a substrate of light and beauty, and even darkness illuminates. Following guitar lines that are totally unusual and foreign to the common notion of the six strings, you enter another level, among the clouds that attract and at the same time repel the light that comes from the void, in a true and continuous flow of consciousness that embraces everything starting from the parts that compose it, arriving at breaking the division and diversity of the parts. This album should not be listened to, you have to immerse yourself with your eyes closed, it is almost a meditation in the most different sense of the word, a being here and now but ten thousand meters from the ground, very distant from where we are now. The quality of Dirk’s deep ambient and drone is always very high, the compositions come from different publications, but they are part of a single continuum and you can perceive it very well.
Depth, beauty and even magnificence, for a work that rises with every listen, and that like cells continually germinates producing new cells, in a breath that is not only music but a tendency to infinity and to awaken a part of us that is infinite and that floats, far from our body. It is not a work for those who seek genre niches or belonging to some genre or scene, here is the universe in its totality that pulsates. -Maximum Argo
Reviews Editor –
From Il Circolo
Not all compilations are the same.
Some are functional to complete an artist’s discography thanks to previously unreleased tracks, studio excerpts and B-sides of scarcely available singles; others are obscene commercial maneuvers, usually with an unreleased track, some superfluous live and heard-and-received material; still others are somewhere in between, enjoyable only when released in box set form, where the abundance of material and care of the packaging make up for the partial uselessness. This one, by Dirk Serries, is something else.
Described as “a homage and return to pure harmonic sonic moments,” the collection includes eight tracks for the beauty of three hours of music, tracks excerpted from the eponymous series of seventeen albums characterized by direct and completely spontaneous recording, without scores, nor ideas, nor structures from which to start or work on, precisely a ‘stream of consciousness’ that manifests itself through guitar and effects masterfully dominated by the Belgian artist, who like few others manages to convey visions, emotions, vibrations, sensations.
Lastly, a more than fundamental clarification: Dirk Serries is the name under which the artist known as vidnaObmana is registered at the Antwerp registry office. Just so you understand.
Reviews Editor –
From Ambient Blog
Dirk Serries’ remarkable output, both in terms of quality and quantity, manifests in various forms. His journey began in the mid-eighties under the moniker Vidna Obmana, with releases spanning until around 2005, although titles continued to emerge even after he ceased using this alias. He then transitioned to projects such as Fear Falls Burning or Microphonics, among others, showcasing his seemingly boundless creativity.
One of his notable endeavors, Streams of Consciousness, ran from 2013 to 2015, and again from 2023 up until February 2024. This ongoing project comprises 18 editions, each featuring two tracks roughly 20 minutes in duration. The titles of each edition are suffixed with a number, likely indicating the creation date in YYDDMM format. The complete series is available on the Streams Of Consciousness Bandcamp page.
Projekt Records now offers a compilation from this series, featuring a selection of 8 tracks, each drawn from a different edition. Though termed a ‘selection,’ it offers nearly three hours of profound ambient guitar drones – ‘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, ‘relying entirely on his ability to create these linear masses of ambience from scratch and real-time on the electric guitar and just a handful of pedal effects – no computer is applied. No post-production or editing is involved.’
Generously, Projekt Records and Dirk Serries provide this compilation as a name-your-price download (for a limited time). However, for completists, the journey doesn’t end here. To be continued.
Reviews Editor –
From Avant Music News
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. -Mike
Reviews Editor –
From Dave Aftandilian at Bandcamp:
I loved drifting off to Dirk Serries’ compositions as vidnaObmana, and these new streams seem to flow directly down from those ideas. The shimmering guitar here has a very organic ambience. At time 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.
Reviews Editor –
From Exposé
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. -Peter Thelen