Belgian experimental guitarist Dirk Serries and British singer-songwriter-guitarist-sound artist Justin K. Broadrick (founder of the experimental metal bands Godflesh and Jesu) are adventurous sound explorers who are in sync since the early eighties when they both were active in the underground cassette network, individually producing experimental, industrial, and noise music. They worked together in the last decade when Broadrick did the remixes for Serries’ ambient project Vidna Obman, and reconstructions for Serries Continuum project and collaborated in Serries’ Microphonics and Fear Falls Burning projects. But their duo project under the moniker Loud As Giants is more like ‘a trip down memory lane’, symbolizing their mutual fascination for the 80’s culture in which they grew up and all the relevant and groundbreaking genres Serries and Broadrick were influenced by.
Empty Homes is informed by the Covid-19 pandemic isolation and the global nostalgia of that time. It features four dark and mostly dramatic, ambient soundscapes that meet drones, layered and looped with noisy and distorted, industrial sounds and heavy, tribal pulses. These hypnotic and addictive, sometimes play with atmospheric, techno-like beats («Room Three»), other times with unsettling, dense and urban massive walls of sounds («Estranged») or with cinematic, suggestive and comforting images («Isolation») relating to the images of empty homes, as far as possible from the busy centers of big cities and overcrowded streets, and Broadrick claims that all these pieces are «full of loss and emptiness». And suppose we borrow an immortal saying of the Chinese Daoist sage Lau Tzu (already used in the album of Jesu and Serries, Resolution Heart, Toneafloat, 2016). In that case, Series and Broadrick are kindred spirits that “move in utter emptiness. let their minds meander in the great nothingness».
Serries’ solo album Nocturnal Discord suggests the next phase in his long-running ambient trajectory, improvised and performed solely on the electric guitar with an array of stunning pedal effects, treatment and processing (and no synths-driven textures). It is informed by and reflects his newly explored vocabulary from endless free improvised sessions in the last decade and more, solo and with like-minded bold improvisers and sonic explorers. The album was recorded in real-time straight to stereo in his home studio in January 2023. The five dreamscapes are minimalist and fragile, more abstract and melancholic, colored with subtle, distorted and dissonant sounds, but flow organically and evoke cinematic images, providing a quiet and hypnotic-psychedelic sonic haven for contemplation and meditation. Nocturnal Discord is released in a limited edition of 40 cassettes and a download option.
Series’ partner, photographer-free improviser Martina Verhoeven captured the suggestive cover art of Serries’ solo album Fluctuation Of Being. Series calls this ambient project «cycles of tonal phrases, washes of guitar drowned in a vast sea of sustain to create a surreal sonic mood to dwell in on repeat». The five, atmospheric drone pieces are ornamented with elusive melodic veins. These pieces were recorded on the electric guitar, and performed in real-time with the help of a handful of pedal effects. The five pieces were performed, recorded, mixed and mastered by Serries throughout 2019-2022, and all suggest a distinct sense of comforting yet quite melancholic meditation, a different one of Nocturnal Discord, but one that allows you to float peacefully with your thoughts and immediate sensations.
Eyal Hareuveni
Dirk Serries (el., effects), Justin K Broadrick (g, elec)
