DIRK SERRIES’ ZONAL DISTURBANCES III is out since late December. Slowly the reviews are sipping through. To order go here, or read the review here below…

ONLY DEATH IS REAL REVIEW :
Belgian Dirk Serries is back with another album under his own name. Known perhaps best for his work with Vidna Obmana, the prolific musician has worked under many monikers throughout his long career. As Dirk Serries, he has released a staggering amount of albums, of which we’ve previously covered just one, Zonal Disturbances II (here).

Keeping up a brisk pace, the third installment in the series follows within a year of the second. This brings up Serries’ 2025 albums under his own name to an even ten (including splits and collaborations), according to Discogs. That’s a lot of music.

Zonal Disturbances III continues in the style of its predecessor, both aesthetically and musically. Electric guitar continues to be in the center of the album, but be assured, it doesn’t sound like a conventional electric guitar. Probably even less so than on Zonal Disturbances II. It’s played entirely atonally. Again, like on the previous album, Serries utilizes darker tones and distortion to bring an industrial, even dark ambient element to the album, but without going “all-in.” This is still ambient.

The album’s haunting, evocative music consists of drawn-out, distorted drones, slow and long layers of echoing, reverberating, serene background layers. Again, as on the previous part, what sounds like the processed moaning of metal beams under duress echo throughout the album, creating associations with industrial complexes and quiet factories. There’s a surprising amount of stuff going on here at times; as such, Zonal Disturbances III can’t be called minimalist or sparse. Entirely abstract – yes.

Like the predecessor, the album feels like morning dawning over a slumbering, waiting, for a moment still industrial area or complex. Just like the cover artwork suggests: cold, inhuman structures of steel and concrete, over which the first signs of a spring morning dawn. There’s this absolutely beautiful, perfectly still and timeless atmosphere. If you’ve ever walked in the business district of some city really, really early in the morning, before the day starts and workers start buzzing about, you know what I mean. That weird, eerie but incredible sensation of standing outside of time.

There’s also a beautifully cinematic feel to the album. It feels like a long, drawn out panoramic shot of an industrial landscape, capturing the unconventional, brutal beauty of them. Nothing moves, everything is absolutely still, only the shot moves slowly over the landscape, almost like a caress.

Zonal Disturbances III is an impressive album. This is the kind of music that, despite being abstract, atonal and instrumental, speaks in volumes. Words are not needed. It manages to strike a chord somewhere deep inside, find a nucleus of familiarity and build something potent and visual from it.

EXPOSE REVIEW :
On the opposite side of the coin is the equally engaging Zonal Disturbances III, a window into a dark industrial world where just about anything can happen, and the events aren’t always smooth and beautiful, but reside in an undercurrent of chaos and mystery. Again, this soundworld of four discrete long-form tracks was created entirely with electric guitar and a battery of effects, though some different effects this time. Unexpected changes will greet the listener around every dark corner, so be prepared for that eventuality in this third installment of the Zonal Disturbances quintrilogy (we covered Zonal Disturbances II earlier in 2025). The opener “41PMX9SQ” sets the stage for all that follows, and the listener will realize that no sound is off limits, and while there are no cadences, there are percussive sounds, crashes, and distortions rolled into the mix along with all of the other dark undercurrents, some of which sound oddly like a confusing chaos of the lowest keys on a piano, but we know that’s not correct, because everything here was done with a guitar. “TYJ45MP9” begins with some shifting ambient chords, though quickly finds elements of distortion and snarly aggressive chaos as it slowly drifts toward its fifteen-minute conclusion. Like a chain saw cutting through the base of a redwood tree, “YFZ87PRN” sports some pretty harsh distorted sounds, howling, buzzing, and scraping as it goes, while “KLQ89VX6” finds the edgy sound hidden in a dark cavern, bleak and mysterious, with strange sonic events coming in from all directions. An interesting web of sounds, Zonal Disturbances IIIcan be had either on a compact disc or a download.

DARKROOM REVIEW :
10/10 rating ! Con “Zonal Disturbances III” Dirk Serries continua a scavare, non ad avanzare. È una musica che non guarda avanti né indietro, ma verso il basso, come se ogni traccia fosse un lento carotaggio nel sottosuolo del suono. Qui l’ambient non è atmosfera, ma pressione: una massa che si muove con impercettibile lentezza, costringendo l’ascoltatore a ricalibrare tempo e attenzione.
Le quattro composizioni si sviluppano come organismi autonomi, privi di narrazione lineare. Non c’è introduzione né climax, solo un flusso continuo di densità che mutano per microscopiche variazioni. I suoni – originati da una chitarra ma ormai irriconoscibili – si aggregano in droni opachi, abrasivi, a tratti quasi statici, eppure mai immobili. È una musica che sembra sempre sul punto di collassare, ma che resiste, tenuta insieme da un equilibrio precario e intenzionale.
L’aspetto più perturbante del disco è la sua fisicità. “Zonal Disturbances III” non si limita a occupare lo spazio acustico: lo deforma. I cluster lenti e ripetitivi generano una sensazione di claustrofobia controllata, come se l’ambiente d’ascolto si restringesse progressivamente. Non c’è conforto, né l’illusione di un paesaggio sonoro contemplativo. Qui l’ambient si avvicina piuttosto a una forma di tensione continua, che dialoga più con la musica industriale e con certe pratiche elettroacustiche che con l’idea comune del genere. La scelta di registrare tutto dal vivo si avverte chiaramente: i suoni non sono levigati, ma presentano imperfezioni, oscillazioni, sbavature che diventano parte integrante del linguaggio. È proprio in questi dettagli che il disco acquista profondità, rivelando un approccio che privilegia il processo rispetto al risultato, l’attrito rispetto alla forma.
“Zonal Disturbances III” richiede tempo, concentrazione e una certa disponibilità a perdersi. Ma per chi accetta questa condizione, l’ascolto si trasforma in un’esperienza ipnotica e destabilizzante, capace di ridefinire i confini stessi dell’ambient contemporaneo. Non una colonna sonora, ma una presenza. Non un rifugio, ma un luogo in cui sostare, anche quando diventa scomodo.

KRAUTNICK REVIEW :
Einer weiteren Reihe gehört „Zonal Disturbances III“ an. Hier ist die Grundanordnung ähnlich, also Serries allein mit E-Gitarre und Effektgeräten, aber das Ergebnis weicht sehr von „Infinite And Unbound“ ab. Hier sind die Sounds harscher, noisiger, droniger, rauher, krasser. Und nicht nur das, hier errichtet Serries Untiefen im ohnehin eher unruhigen Fluss, es kratzt, knirscht, schabt, dröhnt, bratzt, brummt, und da wird es noch unfassbarer, dass er auch diese Sounds auf der E-Gitarre erzeugte. Hier ist die Stimmung aufgewühlt, aufgekratzt, wie in einer Erwartungshaltung, die sich über eine Stunde lang aufbaut und vorsichtshalber doch nicht entlädt. Rhythmen gibt es weiterhin keine, es bleibt eine rein atmosphärische Erfahrung, nur dass diese Atmosphäre hier etwas herausfordernder ist. Dennoch bietet auch dieses Album zwischenzeitig Momente der Kontemplation, doch muss man darauf gefasst sein, dass noisigere Sounds diese schon bald unterbrechen. Oder besser: bereichern. Die vier Titel „41PMX9SQ“, „TYJ45MP9“, „YFZ87PRN“ und „KLQ89VX6“ lassen eher auf abstrakte Electromusik aus dem Hause Warp schließen, doch erfüllen die „Zonal Disturbances“ hier allenfalls den Aspekt abstrakt. Serries‘ Kunst erringt hier ein Krönchen dadurch, dass er auch diese vergleichsweise unbequemen Tracks grundsätzlich harmonisch hinbekommt.

CHAIN D.L.K REVIEW :
4,5 out of 5 stars rating ! There’s something quietly defiant about “Zonal Disturbances III”. No manifesto, no explanatory fireworks – just four long slabs of sound, patiently unfolding, as if time itself had agreed to slow down and listen. Dirk Serries doesn’t announce his presence anymore; he occupies it. After nearly four decades of work, he no longer needs to prove that ambient music can be deep, difficult, or dangerous. He simply demonstrates it, again, with unnerving calm.This third chapter in the “Zonal Disturbances” cycle continues Serries’ long-standing dialogue with the electric guitar – an instrument he persistently refuses to let behave like one. Here, the guitar is stretched, blurred, and coaxed into dense, hovering masses, less about notes than about pressure, friction, and duration. Recorded live in a single space, these pieces breathe with the slight imperfections of real time: micro-shifts, tiny tremors, the sense that the sound could tilt or collapse if stared at too hard. It doesn’t – but you feel the risk.The four compositions, cryptically titled like fragments of a lost industrial inventory, are slow-moving yet never inert. Serries works with repetition, but not the soothing, loop-based repetition of background ambient. This is insistence. Chords pile up, hang, decay, and reassert themselves, forming clusters that feel geological rather than musical. Listening becomes less about following progression and more about inhabiting a zone – hence the title – where mood, texture, and endurance quietly conspire.What keeps “Zonal Disturbances III” from slipping into abstraction-for-abstraction’s-sake is its emotional weight. There’s a somber gravity here, an undercurrent of unease that likely traces back to Serries’ roots in industrial and experimental music. This isn’t ambient as décor; it’s ambient as environment, occasionally hostile, occasionally consoling, often indifferent to your presence. The eeriness doesn’t jump out – it seeps in, like cold through walls you thought were insulated.Serries’ career arc matters here. From his early days pushing noise and guitar-based experimentation, through various aliases and stylistic evolutions, he has consistently resisted the genre-policing instincts of the music industry. Ambient, in his hands, has never been about prettiness or passivity. It’s about tension held over long spans, about how minimal means can produce maximal psychological impact. If contemporary ambient discourse exists at all, it does so with his fingerprints somewhere on the page.This installment doesn’t try to outdo its predecessors, nor does it function as a dramatic pivot. It deepens the cycle, widening its internal logic rather than breaking it open. If anything, it rewards familiarity: the more you’ve spent time in Serries’ world, the more these disturbances reveal their subtle internal weather.”Zonal Disturbances III” isn’t a record you get so much as one you submit to. It doesn’t chase you; it waits. And if you’re willing to slow your pulse to match its pace, it offers a rare luxury in contemporary listening culture: the chance to disappear for an hour without being told what you’re supposed to find when you come back.

A few days into the release of DIRK SERRIES’ INFINITE AND BEYOND and we’ve our first review. The album is currently available at ‘name your price’ over at Projekt’s Bandcamp.

PROGRESSIVE ROCK CENTRAL REVIEW : 
Belgian composer and guitarist Dirk Serries (also known for work under the alias vidnaObmana) has released Infinite And Unbound, a digital-only album via Projekt.
Designed with electric guitar and a small set of effects, the release features five long-form, deeply mesmerizing ambient electronic pieces that move through deep ambient and drone. The tracks were created in real time, leaning into slow-evolving harmonies, hauntingly beautiful soundscapes, and a melancholic tone. Serries is often noted for balancing density and restraint. On Infinite And Unbound, that approach shows up in extended passages that hover between sound and silence, with layered washes designed for quiet, solitary listening.

OPUS REVIEW :
Expertly crafted drones that are just as ominous and foreboding as they are beautiful and entrancing.
Although he retired his vidnaObmana ambient project nearly two decades ago, Dirk Serries has continued releasing music, and no one could ever accuse him of resting on his laurels. He’s released over 30 titles in the last two years alone, ranging from solo works to collaborations with Rodrigo Amado, Benedict Taylor, Trösta, and his wife, Martina Verhoeven.
The title of Serries’ latest album, Infinite and Unbound, is quite apropos. Using nothing more than an electric guitar and some effects pedals, he creates vast soundscapes that drift, shimmer, and unfurl with seemingly no end in sight. As such, a song like “Ocean Became Light” can prove just as ominous and foreboding as it is beautiful and entrancing. Serries’ drone-work is often likened to Chihei Hatakeyama’s, though I find Serries more surreal and even alien in comparison to Hatakeyama’s naturalistic atmospheres, though no less sublime and ephemeral.

MOORS MAGAZINE REVIEW :
Een elektrische gitaar, pedalen en effecten, meer heeft de Belgische componist Dirk Serries niet nodig voor zijn opmekelijke ambient drones. Voor sommigen zal er in deze muziek wellicht te weinig gebeuren, maar daar ligt voor mij nu juist de aantrekkingskracht – ik kan me aan deze muziek volledig overgeven en me op de golven laten meedeinen. “Meer moet dat niet zijn”, zoals een van de Belgische topkoks regelmatig zegt.
Meer ga ik er hier ook niet over zeggen – gewoon gaan luisteren met open oren en proberen in de muur van geluid ook de details en de subtilitieten te herkennen, want als je door die muur heen luistert valt er bijzonder veel te genieten.

EXPOSE REVIEW :
Here we have two very different sides of Dirk Serries’ work (and there are other sides as well), and it’s a stunning revelation what can be done with a guitar a collection of effects, but Infinite and Unbound certainly illustrates the dreamy, floating side of his ambient work, where vivid sheets of shadows, light, and all shades of color mingle in free space in the far reaches of the infinite, layering over one another in a free exchange of sonic bliss, unbound by any structures or cadences. Each of the five long tracks here clocks in at ten minutes or more, the two parts of “Everything Is Known” together comb the far reaches of the universe for 26 minutes — though they are separated by the title track and “Ocean Became Light” — and the set is concluded with the stunning “Cleansed from Dust.” The mysterious atmospherics and slow-evolving melancholic washes breathe unique energies and warmth as each piece unfolds in real time, yet each of the pieces stands on its own without the far too common practice of crossfading; each piece glistens with its own introspective beauty and shades of dark, light, color, and shimmer. The title track, above all in particular, breathes in and out with its own special powers, meandering harmonics and stunning vistas. The soundtrack is here, all the listener needs to do is supply the imagination. At this point, Infinite and Unbound is available only as a digital download.

KRAUTNICK REVIEW :
ir mussten ja jetzt tatsächlich mal einige Momente ohne neue Musik des Antwerpener Gitarrenwunders Dirk Serries auskommen, dafür tritt er zum Jahreswechsel mit gleich zwei neuen Alben auf den Plan. Die Versuchsanordnung auf beiden Alben ist ähnlich: Der Mann allein mit einer nicht als solche erkennbaren E-Gitarre und Effektgeräten, Ambient und Drones aufgenommen in Echtzeit. „Infinite And Unbound“ ist ein exklusives Download-Album für Projekt Records, „Zonal Disturbances III“ ist das Filetstück der auf fünf Teile ausgelegten Reihe bei Zoharum Records und auch als CD erhältlich. Zum Abtauchen schön entspannend das erste, zusätzlich herausfordernd brummig das zweite Album.Serries kann ja alle Arten von Ambient, für „Infinite And Unbound“ verlegt er sich auf den herzerwärmend schönen. Fünf Tracks in 65 Minuten, die alle fließend ineinander übergehen und mit dieser technischen Betrachtung auch die Musik schon im Ansatz beschreiben: alles fließt. Dabei gar nicht so gemächlich, wie man erwarten würde: Serries variiert die Tonhöhen recht zügig, lässt sie umeinander schweben, aber nicht etwa rhythmisch, eher wie verliebte Geistwesen aus einer anderen Dimension, mythische fernöstliche unendlich lange Drachen etwa, die im pastellstrahlenden Licht einander vorsichtig umgarnen, bezirzen, auf sich aufmerksam machen wollen, und deren transzendente, transparente Körper kein sichtbares Ende haben, sondern einfach ausfaden, mit dem Hintergrund eins werden, also wahrhaftig unendlich und unbegrenzt sind.
Die Töne, also die Farben, die Serries verwendet, sind hell, strahlend, nicht blendend, und sie verbreiten eine positive Stimmung, nicht hymnisch-jubilierend, vielmehr umarmend. Er hält diese sonischen Bilder zudem frei von Störungen, Untiefen, Riffen, also Riffs, und konzentriert sich voll darauf, sich nicht zu konzentrieren, nämlich alles auszuschalten und die Emotionen aus sich herausfließen zu lassen. Passenderweise nennt Serries den dritten von fünf Tracks „Ocean Became Light“ und umschreibt damit den Sound sehr treffend. Eine Gitarre übrigens hört man hier nicht heraus, überhaupt könnte man sich nur schwer festlegen, mit welchen Mitteln Serrries diese Töne generierte, hätte man nicht bereits einige Ambient-Drone-Hörerfahrungen gemacht und eine entsprechende Ahnung. Serries fasst dieses Album als Teil seiner Reihe „Streams Of Consciousness“ auf.