DIRK SERRIES – a new life of Microphonics
Dirk Serries is an artist in the true sense of the word. You have heard from him in a variety of monikers, mostly Fear Falls Burning and Vidna Obmana. But today the judgement has to be that he is not a musician any more, he is an aural sculptor. Like a sculptor uses the substraction or addition of matter to bring a form he has in his mind to real life, Serries uses sounds of various origins to build on his vision, an auditive vision of a sound deeply imbedded in his mind that he wants to bring to life. He works so long and hard on his auditive visions and over the course of a number of albums that it seems impossible to follow the sometimes microscopic changes from one to the next. Because it seems that to Serries every record is just another step on the way. And on top of that his vision changes during the course of time. He is well aware of these changes, probably more aware than most of his listeners and dedicated fans. Which has to do with the number of albums he releases and also the fact that not everything he does or records is being released. So listeners will never get the full picture of sounds that are stored in his mind and brought to life. But to a true artist it can not be the goal to make at least one single person understand the totality and completeness of his vision. That task is futile, anyway. You cannot look into somebody elses mind. Communication will always remain incomplete.
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After a large number of years Serries has once
again changed course on his adventure to the sound in his head. And whenever
these changes hit some point of decision he will also change his moniker, from
vidnaObmana to Fear Falls Burning and now latest to Microphonics, which are the
title of the works delivered under his own real name. The fact that he uses his
given name for the first time seems to be crucial enough. But it can’t mean
that he is now trying for a more real or true sound, because what sets Serries
apart in all the variations and themes he has recorded, is that his sounds
always were direct, open and fully defined. In many instances he noted the
complete equipment used in the recordings (which were only one guitar and one
amplifier in his most direct and monothematic recordings, especially as Fear
Falls Burning). How decisive were collaborations of various kinds, especially
memorable (to me, that is, as I have no complete picture of Serries’ work just
like anybody, you will only find my limited viewpoint in here. As usual,
though.) with Nadja or the trio with Paul van den Berg (guitar) and his wife
Martine (bass) as 3 Seconds of Air.
The droning, mountainous walls of pure guitar
sounds are gone. The heavy guitar sounds of Fear Falls Burning will stay with us
for quite some time as there are a number of re-releases and releases of
hitherto unreleased recordings from Fear Falls Burning in the pipeline. But as
any true artist, Serries is already a long way ahead and away from where he was,
when he produced those works that hae just now left the production cycle and are
now being distributed to the public. Nowadays (and that means some time in the
past when the youngest recordings were produced) Serries is interested in more
minimal, almost electronic sounds that seem to come from out of nowhere but
sparkle with pure, pristine beauty. This is not a step back to the ambient
sounds of vidnaObmana, because for one there is no trace of the industrial
influences that haunted vidnaObmana, and second hidden deep within these
soundscapes entitled Microphonics are beautiful melodies. It is some sort of a
curse for an artist to always be measured against what he did, when he should be
measured against what he will be doing. But who will be able to know this – I
am just a poor little hobby-music writer (not even a paid music journalist) so I
can only do what is here in front of me.
And that is the first releases from Tonefloat, Serries’ homebase and most steady companion: a CD or full LP entitled “Microphonics I-V” and a ten inch vinyl record entitled “Microphonics XII”. The collector in me twitches with excitement and questions about numbers VI to XI, but after twenty years of record collecting I know my little demons pretty well and find relief in the thought that everything will come its way as it may. Especially “Microphonics I” as it is still missing. Maybe it will be missing forever, because – and that is the most important thing – if it doesn’t fit Serries’ search for purity and the sound, then it will probably never be released. By the way, I don’t know if it was a discussed decision or just so seemed to happen, but as the cover art for Serries’ records seemed to move from close up of his guitars and equipments to very atmospheric architectural black and white photographs, so did change his music, it seems. Or is it just my impression. Both are done by the same photographer (Martina Verhoeven, go visit her website: www.martinaverhoeven.be) and I could spend hours just looking at the buildings, usually desolate and left to natural decay but always glowing in some parts with the sun shining in from somewhere outside the picture as they always seem to be taken from the shade. A very interesting viewpoint and a perfect partnership to the music. (I have taken the liberty of reproducing some of the covers here without asking and I hope that is okay. As a small webfanzine I never ask if it is okay to scan and put up the covers of the records I review, but here I find myself confronted with photographic art and in so much respect that I found this remark necessary. Moreover the scans turned out pretty bad, because of the texture of the covers I took them from, so you better go look at them on the net anyway. But I hope you get a first impression.)
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So what is it, the new thing? It is no hard
guess to see that it is minimal, repetitive and looped (to some superficial
observers it might seem that Serries’ no matter what moniker he chooses might
be re-recording the same thing over and over again. But again, that only shows
the focus he has as an artist.). But the sounds and chord changes have become
more and more subtle and introverted, the organic warmth has taken over the
sound from the cold and sometimes harsh pounding of guitars. Serries’ never
turned up his equipment and went full frontal towards the listener, most of his
records started slowly and as from the distance. But still Microphonics glows
with a warmth and humanness that is very new to his sound.
Then there is static, and I don’t mean the noise sound that comes from your radio transistor when there is no real signal, but the architectural art of constructing a building at the same time stable enough to be high and firm but also flexible enough to bow to winds, earthquakes and the like. Microphonics seem very static and without a lot of dynamics, but once you have tuned down to a very slow pace and fitted your heart to the rolling of the planet rather than the pulse of the city traffic, you will realize viscerally how much movement really is in these sounds. Let me describe it this way: where Fear Falls Burning was filled with waves, big and small, washing over each other, Microphonics is like watching the heaving of the sea as it moves. So we have moved from standing at the beach to being in the middle of the ocean, it seems. Back to the most basic origin of life. And it is also going back to more and more monothematic sounds, leaving a lot of layers outside, stripping the music down to what that one single sound really is.
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Also in true artist fashion, Serries doesn’t
really care anymore for audience expectations. His only rule is the vision in
his head and how it changes and how he will manage to get there at some point.
All other things don’t seem to mean a lot. For instance, some of the tracks
just stop, which is a big surprise. Because they start so slowly and glowing,
work their way up to some flat level culmination and then go on and on and
instead of fading out over a likewise long period of time, they are just turned
off really quickly. As Microphonics are basically real time improvisations it
would mean that this closure is a deliberate act by Serries, and one that takes
a lof of strength or bravery. Maybe it is just a production thing, as the side
of the record is out, but still, it is a question mark hanging in the air. Many
more questions marks will be added in the future, I am sure. Some of them will
be answered, some won’t, and actually it is all the same, as any kind of
meaningful question or answer is there in that one note, that one single sound
that sounds as if it does not exist in time but fills all space and time in this
single blink of an eye right here.
Alongside the Microphonics releases Tonefloat
has also released two more albums of Fear Falls Burning recordings from 2005 and
2006. One is called “The rainbow mirrors a burning heart” and contains two
live tracks released on an sold out album on Auf Abwegen and an unreleased
studio track. The album tracks are very minimalistic, almost like an organ
playing one note only and then the first supported by something that sound like
choirs singing single notes far far in the back, before it starts to fade into
the back a quarter of an hour later. And the other with some heavily distorted
guitar noises crashing in. The unreleased track shows a very interesting analogy
to the microphonics structure, but with several layers and glisteningly picked
guitar chords. The other FFB release is called “woe of the desolate mourner”
and contains two unreleased live tracks. The two tracks on there are slow drones
that add intricate, slow paced melodies on a fundament of burning waves of
sound. Not so heavy, rather introverted and pensive. The first track with gentle
bass notes from the guitar, the second with another angelic choir around the
corner. It is impossible to describe the beauty of these 20 to 30 minute long
tracks in just a few words. Final news: There is also a new Fear Falls Burning
album being produced, but it shall contain more complex work and “jazz
influences”. Very exciting.
Georg Cracked, June 2010