SPERIS

It’s testament to the timeless melodic excitement, seductive, funky and fiery grooves and crackling electric guitarisma of multi-instrumentalists and sound designers Dieter Spears and Brian Paris that the revamp of their extraordinary dual new age/rock instrumental project Speris is having such an impact nearly 30 years after they originally conceived and recorded it.

Pop in on their dedicated website ALBUM: SPERIS - Inhaus Creative and you’ll see it plain as day: Speris is in the company of many contemporary new age greats, having reached #15 on the One World Radio Charts for October 2025. It’s likely that had Dieter (bass, Midi drums and Synths, MIDI programming, sound design) and Brian (electric and acoustic guitars, synth and MIDI programming, sound design) managed to hook up with a label and released their initial Speris tracks as an album in 1997, it would simply be a nice relic of another era now – and maybe one that got lost in the shuffle amidst excellent new age rock projects of that decade by genre greats like Paul Speer, Buckethead and the Journey’s Neal Schon. Retooling/re-imagining the album with live bass (by Dieter) and live drums by Gray LeGere brings Speris roaring into the mid-2020s with fresh insight, energy and dimension that stands out as something of an instant classic in the genre today.

From the auspiciously titled “New Beginning,” the perfect seduction and intoxicating intro to the duo’s infectious, guitar centric but sonic surprise filled vibe, through the hypnotic ambients turned propulsive rock funk snazz of “Lost Blessings,” Speris is a dynamic reflection of an organic partnership rooted in a musical and personal friendship that blossomed in the 90s when Paris answered an ad and joined Subject to Change, a Nashville indie rock band Dieter was already a part of. While their very detailed website includes “he said, he said” testimonies of their creative evolution together, suffice for this space to say that it was pretty clear from the moment they met that they were destined to vibe together outside the confines of the band.

Never fully satisfied with the level Subject to Change reached, and craving more “polish, more perfection,” Dieter built a small MIDI studio to lock himself away and create meaningful musical art. When he shared his work with Brian, and vice versa, there was instant excitement – as if Brian’s joining the band was just a stepping-stone to the magic they would create as Speris (a portmanteau of “Spears” and “Paris”).

As Brian says, “Dieter and I hit it off on a personal level, and he took me seriously as an instrumental music composer. That was a real moment for me. Once I heard his demos, I knew I’d found someone to truly collaborate with. We always had a knack for ‘finishing each other’s sentences in a musical sense.” The two began working on new music while Subject to Change was still rehearsing and gigging – and continued for a few years after the band broke up. Dieter adds, “I had a bunch of tunes in progress and wanted to get another creative perspective on them, so Brian came over—and the rest is history. He’s always been great at balancing out my Type A energy and steering the creative process so we both get what we want out of it.”

As we listen to the supercharged and often freewheeling and spontaneous, but always perfectly structured 10 track, nearly hour long journey of Speris, we can enjoy imagining these two mega-talented guys, early in their musical careers, getting together weekly to create an eventual repertoire of 20 or so tunes – in writing sessions fueled by strong coffee and reruns of Star Trek: The Next Generation! Dieter was a prolific composer by then, and Brian’s role was to come up with melody lines, a bridge section, maybe a chorus. Or sometimes, the guitarist hit the session with a fully formed tune while Dieter added a bridge or chorus to complete the piece. At a certain point it became obvious that they were making an album. They created a round of mixes in the fall of 1995, and the following year were approached about remixing the tracks and enlisted the assistance of a few Nashville based drum programmers. Then they did full remixes at a commercial studio outside the city.

Who knows why great music sometimes takes decades to find its rightful time? But let’s be glad it did, because SPERIS circa 2023 (when the two reconvened) packs a greater, much edgier punch than their original unreleased album. Dieter and Brian lost touch for years but in the 2010s began running into each other at shows. When a videographer friend of Brian’s found an old video of a Subject to Change gig, they got together to watch and relive old times. Yet as Brian explains it, the reboot of Speris was pretty random. Dieter came into band rehearsal one Saturday in 2023 and asked if his counterpart was interested in rebuilding tunes from the ground up – and getting things released properly. The answer was obvious.

Besides a desire to dust off long neglected musical nuggets and see if they could shine anew, one of Dieter’s primary motivations is the success he’s had as co-owner, VP and popular artist on Wayfarer Music Group, an endeavor which reignited his passion for making music again. Excited about new opportunities to explore, he had been diving through old sessions and unfinished ideas on his hard drive, revising and writing new material. For a time, he had the original Speris recordings on streaming but when he decided to reboot and refresh, he took them off.

“Honestly, with the skills and gear we have now, it just made sense to give the music the treatment it always deserved,” Dieter says. “I always believed these tunes were solid and had an indefinite shelf life. Brian and I stuck pretty close to the original versions but embellished things as well, without rules or restrictions. I think we're better players than we were back then. We got many better sounds than before. When we started anew, I just assumed we'd do programmed drums, but I think having Gray Legere's live drum tracks gave us much more of a live band feel for the final product.”

The duo approached the new sessions like any other project they might be doing in 2023, building the frameworks of the songs in their DAW based home studios. Brian usually started with one of the old tunes and wrote a chart as a new roadmap. He built a multi-track timeline based on what he wanted the arrangement to be – scratch drum track, synths, bass, guitars. Then he gave it to Dieter for further development. Most of the time, they struck pretty close to the old versions, though on occasion, Brian says he wanted to repeat certain cool synth licks Dieter had come up with.   

The hypnotic pitter patter percussion and ambient soundscaping in the intro of “New Beginning” hints at its progression as a heavy tribal meets rock tune that rolls as the cutting edge, junglesque mid-tempo throb (maybe to get the heart pumping) to start the day. Thematically, it’s perfect, as Speris embraces their creative resurrection and begins burning daylight pretty quickly. With its bright synth motif dancing above a pulsating bass/drum groove, soon topped with some of Brian’s most intricate, blistering energy, “First Time” finds Speris emphatically conveying a sense of joy, a feeling of great discovery, no doubt sharing through musical expression the feeling they had when they first connected. As Dieter says, “It’s the sonics of immediate attraction and excitement.” By now totally hooked on the Speris flow, listeners will feel the power instantly!   

Though the duo doesn’t have any specific overall concept (besides their fortuitous reunion) for the album, some individual tracks seem designed to reflect specific emotions, while others tap into unique, colorful imagery that inspired them. After a bold, symphonic flavored intro, “Malawie,” for instance, offers a dual darkness and light sensation in the whimsical call and response pattern of Dieter’s playful synth motif and Brian’s echoing guitar crackle – followed by the guitarist’s truly letting loose before a return to the hook. Truly one of the album’s most danceable jams, it’s inspired by a photo of a massive life-giving lake in Africa. It’s fun to travel there with these guys! They balance that track’s sizzling intensity with the gentler, mystical, easy flowing “Innocence,” inspired by “innocents everywhere, whether young or old.” Dieter was inspired to compose this highly meditative piece by one of the new age giants of the 80’s and 90’s, the great Patrick O’Hearn.  

On “Giants at Dawn,” Speris’ traveling energies next take us, quite literally, to the bottom of the ocean, where Dieter imagines what it would feel like to be an observer of all the fascinating sea life only the bravest deep-sea explorers usually ever see. Moody, more electro-ambient and restrained gems like this offer a balance to the grandeur filled rock madness they create elsewhere, seducing the listener with a less is more aural mentality. There’s boom, groove and edge, for sure, but it’s also one of the duo’s most infectiously melodic sojourns, an immersion filled with the distant sounds of whales communicating and a steady buzzing reflecting how hard it would be for humans to communicate in this environment. Dieter says in his notes that he got scuba certified and tried sitting on the bottom – and was pleased that the literal wave of emotions matched his time there.

The fact that Speris says that “The Villa” and “Faces and Hands” “just came out without much effort for Dieter” truly reflects his natural intuitive talents and willingness to invite everyone, with wild abandon, to explore with him the expanding boundaries of the genre as he channels surreal sounds from God knows where! “The Villa” is a funky classic-styled new age rocker, with deep grooves, the big bam boom of heavy drums and a swirl of synth sparkle and searing rock guitar. Brian says this one makes him think of an imaginary Salvador Dali painting, one that never got put to canvas. As for that other “effortless” work “Faces and Hands,” it’s pure sensual ambient perfection (with some sweet synth melody in spots) slowly building symphonic mystery around another of Brian’s picture perfect, sonically rich rock god excursions. The image they worked off was the ticking clock cadence of music – time marching on…from 1995 to 2023, for instance. Brilliant synchronicity!  

Speris takes the musical journey theme quite literally on the album’s most charming, pop oriented tunes, “The Train,” a lighthearted romp spotlighting Dieter’s catchy, free-spirited high toned melody over a mid-tempo locomotive groove – with some tasty, swirling guitar crackles for harmony before Brian calls “all aboard” with his soaring solo action. This piece is a true enduring time traveler with origins in a four-track demo the guitarist created in Memphis circa 1988. Brian originally called it “Windows of the Soul” but it was renamed for rhythmic reasons that will become obvious upon listening.

“The Train” pairs well with the following, more guitar-centric track “Deserted,” another tune emerging from a 4-track Brian demo whose balance of heavier guitars and whimsical synth dances may inspire thoughts of the mix of determination and humor one needs to survive a night alone after being dumped from the train in the middle of nowhere (just speculating here – these guys make storytelling part of the magic). Listeners will agree with the duo’s assessment that there’s a major Pink Floyd influence here – and it’s the epitome of their ambient fusion sound. The unusual, initially haunting, sometimes reflective, other times feisty and celebratory flow of “Lost Blessings” is clearly musical autobiography at work. It finds them digging deep, feeling grateful that incredible music that was once lost to the ages (or a dusty hard drive!) was rescued from oblivion for electronic new age fans to dig into circa 2025.

“I truly love the sonics of the new album,” Brian says. “Everything in the stereo field has its place. The mixes sound polished without sounding sterile. I also think we played better this time around. I'm thrilled that Dieter played bass on everything because he’s a great player. I think we effectively honored the vibe of the original versions as well. For the listeners, I hope this is uplifting therapeutic music that people can play on a road trip, or unwind with after a challenging work day.”

Whether it’s 1995 or 2025, Speris is electronic new age at its most inspiring and masterful.