Major player is Belgian Dirk Serries – somehow I prefer this alias to his other prolific persona, the droney Vidna Obmana. When records appear with roman numerals next to the title, a bit of me is filled with apprehension at the prospect of yet more volumes of music to process, but Zonal Disturbances III (ZOHARUM ZOHAR 367-2) is a welcome dose of turpentine to a wounded head.
I’m impressed that he did all this with just an electric guitar and a chain of effect pedals, and when I say “all this” I’m referring to a dense and complex noise of continual billows, where the smoke is as solid as plasticine or olive oil mixed with sand. And when we say “just a guitar”, amplification was obviously involved, plus some form of distortion, and even the walls of the studio itself seem to make their contributions known at some level, even if just to introduce themselves with a friendly hello. I think it’s because the entire album was recorded in one single space, hopefully a small and confined room that would force the mind towards concentration on the task at hand. What’s more he did it live and in one take. The assurance does shine through and fascinating, often beautiful, music does emerge.
The label hold Serries in high regard and they would claim that you can’t even talk about the genre of ambient music without bringing his name into the conversation. We may have received Volume II in earlier climes, but the work is not wholly lost, and can be retrieved using certain methods. We might also note that the track titles are just strings of letters and numbers, which might be passwords or other form of code, or simply advertising the composer’s indifference to such matters, deliberately settling for generic and non-specific terms. I won’t say “looking forward to Volume IV”, but this has been a good and unusual guitar record. (06/01/2026)