FEAR FALLS BURNING

He spoke in dead tongues

2CD, projekt/Ikon

As opposed to the trend stated in the Fenton-review, of the electric guitar finding it’s way slowly melting and integrating into electronic music, Fear Falls Burning aka Vidna Obmana aka Dirk Serries steps into a steady stream of a long tradition of musicians using the guitar as an only source of sound without much of processing but a lot pedals, effects and shifts. When I hear about an artist doing a solo-guitar-sounds-record I instantly think of my favourites – Loren MazzaCane Connors, Brian Ruryk, Kazayuki K. Null, Earth, and so on never forgetting the wonderful soundtrack to “Dead Man” by Neil Young – and will compare the new entry with them. Quite unfair, but that’s the way it goes. I am sure, that the possibilities of the guitar still leave a lot of potential open to artists with unique minds and visions. Therefore also the magic of the guitar as a rockstar-symbol as well as a means of avant-garde music creation will never cease. To all of those still crying “The guitar is dead” I still have a hearty “I don’t think so”. Maybe the whole misconception of the prevailance of electronic music over the guitar comes from the fact that guitar-avantgarde has to be really looked for, whereas the stacks in shops flow over with electronica CDs. A few years back I couldn’t find any records by Connors in San Francisco, and that’s where he lived at the time.

Fortunately, Vidna Obmana is able to add new pleasures and textures to this deeply hidden but richly rewarding canon of music. Most dominantly he manages to build his walls of sounds – be they slow and soft or big and harsh – into vast dimensions, really make them stretch out over time and imagined space. For drones relying so heavily on a single sound or soundsource it is quite a feat. Moreover, these tracks were laid down and recorded in real time. I don’t know out of how many hours of material they were picked, but these two hours of droning guitar moments definitely make up for some fine and exceptional moments. And he does take his time for sure. On some of these tracks he changes between two almost identical chords back and forth for a quarter of an hour, dwelling on the slightest change of sound, building up echoes and washing the vibrato and swelling waves of sound over the listener. Track-durations reach well over the 30 minute mark at times, so it should be clear that Serries is a long distance endurance artist as well as highly acute of small details and changes.

Some of his drones dwell heavily on a dark and sombre atmosphere, hinting at the slowmotion powerchord-distortion-excesses by Sunn0))). With the name, title and black- and white design of the CD these parts of the record will make a lot of headway with those more experimentally inclined metal- and goth-freaks, who like a little dark bombast sound late at nights and check out the more outwardly releases on Southern Lord as well as Current93. But there are also delicate and almost gentle moments hidden in these two CDs that will appeal to the Eno-fans alike. The monolithic drones are still more monochrome or monotone (without being boring, mind you) than all of those mentioned with a lot of subtlety still remaining. So, judging by this, about 67 % of all listeners are habitually wearing black clothes, and 55 % have at one point in their live considered ordering records from Staalplat. Which makes for a great mixture in my book, even if Darkwave and Gothic are amongst those musical genres I was never interested in.

I can see Fear Falls Burning sharing a stage with Deep and Sunn0))), which would make for a great night of concrete-trembling bass-sludge, with at first one person, then two and finally three on stage. And the music doubling and tripling along while the listeners start to sway with the wind produced by the amps on stage. Heavenly bliss and a completely new variation on being “blown out of your mind”.