Dirk Serries & Christian Vasseur — Floating Similarities
Floating Similarities is the meeting of two European improv-focused guitarists- Belgian’s Dirk Serries and France’s Christian Vasseur. The seven-track CD album shifts between the abstract, manic, and moody.
The CD comes presented in a mini white gatefold- this features colour cover art of two rowboats sat next to each other on a calm/ picturesque river- which I guess is very much ironic, as there’s not much formally pretty, peaceful, or calm about the sonics inside.
For the album, Serries is playing an archtop guitar, and Vasseur- an eleven-string classical guitar tuned in quarter tone. The set was recorded at Kapel Oude Klooster in Brecht Belgium on the 20th of January 2024. With track runtimes between two and nine minutes a piece.
We move the brooding simmer, fork ‘n’ slice meets eerier pluck of “Celestial Peat”. Onto the rapidly darting pitch wavering pinpricks, jittering scrap, and general manic angularity of “Path To Peaks”.
In its second half, we go from erratic scuttling pick ‘n’ shimmer, darting twang, and sudden angular shimmer ‘n’ twang of “Djinn’s Jokes”. To the low-key, at times eerier shuffling, fiddling strum, darting twang, and shorting dart of “The Traveller Surprised By His Dream” which later on features moments of uneven/ da-da chanting from Vasseur.
If you enjoy improv at its more abstract, at points busy and manic, to off-kilter moody- then I can see Floating Similarities is an album that will appeal.