Interview with Oren Ambarchi in Heathen Harvest
Oren Ambarchi Live in London
CONCERT OREN AMBARCHI + HELM
The Luminaire
Monday 14 July [8pm]
311 High Rd., NW6 T:020.7372.8668 Tube: Kilburn
£7 (advance) £8 (door)
Sydney resident Oren Ambarchi treats his guitar work with an otherworldly alchemy. Straddling music worlds of tonal micro-glitch, black metal drone and outright pop, his captivating minimalism is a sun-drenched treat. Ambarchi's tonal guitar work is filtered through various effects pedals to recreate Mego-like (but more listener-friendly) improvised explorations, akin to many of the best laptop artists (and his collaborators) Christian Fennesz, Tim Hecker and Pimmon. His joint work includes live sets and recordings with Martin Ng, Sunn 0)))'s Stephen O'Malley, Otomo Yoshihide, Keiji Haino, John Zorn, Keith Rowe, Phill Niblock, Gunter Muller, Evan Parker, Toshimaru Nakamura, Dave Grohl, and Damo Suzuki. Ambarchi is also a band member of the unfocussed post-pop group Sun, as well as Burial Chamber Trio, and Gravetemple. Labels releasing his material are Touch, Southern Lord, room40 and Staubgold; notable solo albums include Suspension, Triste, and Grapes From The Estate. How's that for a CV?
NB: support comes from Helm, whose main-man Luke Younger provides sonic billows and industrial-esque surges.
TS05 - Oren Ambarchi - Destinationless Desire
7" vinyl only
Side A: Highway of Diamonds 5:55
Side B: Bleeding Shadow 6:38
Now available in the TouchShop
cut by Jason @ Transition
artwork and photography by Jon Wozencroft
Electric guitars, organ, samples, bells, percussion and motorised cymbal recorded at BJB Studios, Sydney with additional overdubs made at home 2005-2007. Gratitude to Fairport Convention and Boris D Hegenbart.
Oren Ambarchi is a composer and multi-instrumentalist with longstanding interests in transcending conventional instrumental approaches. His work focuses mainly on the exploration of the guitar, "re-routing the instrument into a zone of alien abstraction where it’s no longer easily identifiable as itself. Instead, it’s a laboratory for extended sonic investigation". (The Wire, UK).
This is the next in a new series of 7" vinyl-only releases, 'Touch Sevens'. You can read more about this series here
7" vinyl was the quintessential format for popular music. Today, it is an undervalued and mostly promotional medium, used as a fetishistic signpost to a time of musical authenticity and a "healthy" popular culture. It might seem like another retrograde step to launch a vinyl series just as the download format threatens to dominate, and indeed there is an element of "the rear view mirror"... the generation of Touch artists who grew up with vinyl [and cassette] still feeling a strong emotional attachment to it. This series is more than that... an overtly critical, non-digital statement is supported by treatments of audio work which cannot be applied to digital formats - the sonic texture, the use of a locked groove, the A & the B and the additional dimension of the visual counterpoint. As for the aspect of audience participation, we choose not to specify the RPM on the label, encouraging the listener to experiment with playback options and personal preferences. An attempt to make music that works at both speeds. The front cover might actually be the back cover...
Interview with Oren Ambarchi in Cyclic Defrost
An interview with Oren Ambarchi in Cyclic Defrost can be read here
Live dates for Oren Ambarchi | June & July 2008
Sun June 22 - Ambarchi/Avenaim/Mayson trio
+ Defektro + The Donkey's Tail
THE TOFF
252 Swanston St, Melbourne, Australia
Sun June 29 - Oren Ambarchi solo
KLUUBB
14/F, 367 Hennessy Road, Foo Tak Building, Wanchai, Hong Kong
http://www.whitenoiserecords.org/
Wed July 2 - Oren Ambarchi solo
UGANDA
4 Aristobolus St , Jerusalem, Israel
Sat July 5 - Oren Ambarchi solo
LEVONTIN 7
Tel Aviv, Israel
Sun July 6 - Oren Ambarchi solo
+ Stephen O' Malley solo + Machinefabriek
BIMHUIS
Piet Heinkade 3, 1019 BR Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Mon July 7 - Gravetemple
(Attila Csihar, Oren Ambarchi, Stephen O' Malley, Matt "Skitz" Sanders)
+ Asva
WORM
Achterhaven 148 , 3024 RC Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Tue July 8 - Gravetemple
(Attila Csihar, Oren Ambarchi, Stephen O' Malley, Matt "Skitz" Sanders)
KULTURBUNKER MULHEIM
Berliner Str. 20, 51063 Köln, Germany
Wed July 9 - Gravetemple
(Attila Csihar, Oren Ambarchi, Stephen O' Malley, Matt "Skitz" Sanders)
POINT EPHEMERE
200 quai de Valmy, 75010 Paris, France
Thu July 10 - Gravetemple
(Attila Csihar, Oren Ambarchi, Stephen O' Malley, Matt "Skitz" Sanders)
+ Asva
ULU
Malet Street, London WC1E 7HY, UK
Sat July 12 - Oren Ambarchi solo
SUPERSONIC FESTIVAL
Custard Factory, Birmingham, UK
Sun July 13 - Gravetemple
(Attila Csihar, Oren Ambarchi, Stephen O' Malley, Matt "Skitz" Sanders, Julian Cope)
Mon 14th July
Solo show
+ Helm
THE LUMINAIRE
311 High Road, London NW6 7JR, UK
New Projects & Current Activities | September 2007
New album out now:
In The Pendulum's Embrace
Oren Ambarchi
[Touch # TO:78, 2007]
CD - 3 tracks
Oren Ambarchi continues his otherworldly investigations with "In The Pendulum's Embrace", a dark twin to his landmark 2004 album "Grapes From The Estate" [Touch # TO:61]. Returning again to the hallowed halls of BJB Studios in Sydney, Ambarchi expands the scope and range of his unique musical language, incorporating an even broader pallette of instrumentsand sensibilities. Despite the use of glass harmonica, strings, bells, piano, percussion and guitars, it's startling that the world created is still unmistakably his own, and that there is such a cohesion of vision throughout the albums's three lengthy pieces. With this record there's an even more tenuous coexistence of fragility and density; sounds as light as air mingling with wall shaking low-end. The converted already know the kind of trance-inducing euphoria of Ambarchi's music. Newcomers will be scouting the back catalogue...
You can hear an extract from the album here and an info sheet (pdf) can be downloaded here