Imagine yourself as a grape in a Belgian glasshouse, is the theme of this quietly immersive suite conjured by Christina Vantzou (CV) and Lieven Martens (Dolphins Into The Future) for the latter’s Edições CN 

The musical component of a broader project incorporating poetic texts and photography, ’Serrisme’ conveys the cyclical experience of table grapes growing in vast glasshouses in the Flemish countryside. It was commissioned by the Flemish Heritage Fund to artfully document a peculiar culture that has existed for around 150 years, and has supplyied sweet little orbs to mouths from Russia to UK and USA. 

The grape growing industry there is now a paler shade of what it once was, but the remaining glasshouses offer Vantzou and Martens a rich atmosphere and range of textures to work with. Maybe best known for his tropical dream sequences as Dolphins Into The Future, Lieven Martens plays to his strengths in evocative field recording for the first half, variously placing us under rain on glass and  between snipped vines for a nuanced evocation of the glasshouses’ day-to-day sounds. 

Beloved for her work solo, with The Dead Texan and recently with a run of dead strong CV & JAB recordings; Vantzou takes a more impressionistic approach to the subject with two slow burning ‘Glisten’ beauties. Both working around he 10 minute mark, they offer amply room to drift with long, sustained glassy tones encouraging sublime states of mind, with strings and choral touches that suggest a sort of fading glamour of an old world viewed from outside.

---

Serrisme is:
a musical illustration - by Christina Vantzou,
sound registrations - by Lieven Martens,
a long poetic text - by Jan Matthé,
analogue photographs - by Christophe Piette,
and the usual perfect design - by Jeroen Wille.

---

Edições CN, 2021