With his new album Rain, Steam and Speed, guitarist and composer Reentko Dirks explores the deep interplay of sound, landscape, and memory. Inspired by the English painter William Turner and his famous 1844 masterpiece of the same name, the music translates impressionistic brushstrokes into musical form, capturing the timeless dialogue between nature, industry, and human emotion.

Across twelve evocative tracks, Reentko paints sonic landscapes where personal memories meet universal reflections. Each composition is a story without words: from the fragile stillness of Memory of Snow – a tender recollection of winters long past – to the quiet resilience of Autumn Rain, written in response to the devastation of burning forests, or the luminous calm of After the Rain, evoking the breath of the earth after a summer storm.

Some pieces arrived like fleeting visions: Inside a Turner Painting was born spontaneously on a rainy roadside, while Farewell emerged during a train ride as an intimate meditation on parting. Others reach outward, connecting personal moments to wider worlds – like Lungta, inspired by Tibetan prayer flags carrying wishes across mountain winds, or A Storm Novel, an overwhelming encounter with the raw power of the sea.

Throughout the album, Reentko Dirks’s guitar becomes a storyteller, unfolding layers of poetry, depth, and atmosphere. His music invites us to linger in spaces where time seems suspended – where sound turns into memory, and memory into song.