Live Dates | May 2009
Wed May 20th
Oren Ambarchi solo
+ Our Love will Destroy the World
+ Sign of the Hag
@ The Hole in the Wall
154 Vivian St
Wellington
New Zealand
Thursday May 21st
Oren Ambarchi solo
+ Expansion Bay
@ Dunedin Public Art Gallery
The Octagon
Dunedin
New Zealand
Friday May 22nd
Oren Ambarchi 1pm 'Lecture'
@ Elam lecture Theatre
Auckland
New Zealand
Saturday May 23rd
Oren Ambarchi solo
+ Roy Montgomery
+ Alex McKinnon
@ Artspace
K Rd
Auckland
New Zealand
Live dates March/April 2009
Tue Mar 10 - *Cancelled*
Oren Ambarchi/Rob Mayon/Robbie Avenaim
@ Make It Up Club
Bar Open
Fitzroy
Melbourne
Australia
Sat Mar 14
Sunn 0)))
(Greg Anderson, Stephen O'Malley, Attila Csihar, Oren Ambarchi)
+ Jazkammer
@ Radar Festival
Mexico City
Mexico
www.radar.org.mx/
Thu Mar 19
Oren Ambarchi solo
@ Radar Festival
Mexico City
Mexico
www.radar.org.mx/
Tue Mar 24
Oren Ambarchi solo
+ Ghatanothoa
@ Sinister Noise Club
Rome
Italy
http://www.myspace.com/sinisternoiseclub
Wed Mar 25
Oren Ambarchi solo
@ O-Artoteca
Milan
Italy
http://www.o-artoteca.org/spazio.htm
Thu Mar 26
Oren Ambarchi solo
+ Dario Neri + Orthographe
Transmissions Festival
Galleria Ninapi
Ravenna
Italy
http://www.bronsonproduzioni.com/
Sat Mar 28
Oren Ambarchi solo
+ Z'ev & more
@ Cocart Music Festival
Torun
Poland
http://www.csw.torun.pl/dzialania/festiwale/cocart-music-festival-2009
Thu April 30
Oren Ambaarchi & Nels Cline duo
@ Melbourne International Jazz Festival
National Gallery of Victoria
Melbourne
Australia
http://www.melbournejazz.com
Black Truffle | Reissue of Oren Ambarchi releases
A new label, Black Truffle, is re-issuing two rare recordings from Oren Ambarchi:
Stacte.3
Format: CD
Catalogue Number: BT01
Originally released in 2000 as a limited vinyl only album, 'Stacte.3' is now available on CD for the first time.
Described by Wire scribe Jon Dale as "Alvin Lucier and Cluster collaborating for Mego", the concept of Oren Ambarchi's 'Stacte' LP series - now comprising of five volumes - began in 1998. The first few 'Stacte' LPs were self-released by Ambarchi and featured his earliest explorations of the guitar and its sonic possibilities after a period known as a drummer in post-punk, noise and free jazz outfits. An idea was explored and investigated at length using a spontaneous approach, with Ambarchi treating each side of the vinyl like a canvas, slowly capturing a moment, patiently teasing every nuance and implication from each texture. His method allowed the listener to sink their teeth into something substantial over the course of the LP side's entire duration, resulting in an otherworldly, cumulative impact of patiently unfolding compositions.
The 'Stacte.3' release (especially the LP's second side) was a breakthrough for Ambarchi and it defined the parameters for his subsequent projects such as 2001's 'Suspension' and 'Grapes From The Estate' from 2004, both released on the legendary UK label Touch. 'Stacte.3' is an early glimpse of Ambarchi at his most raw and minimal and it's a fascinating, integral listen in his catalogue of sound works.
Remastered in December 2008 and with artwork designed by Stephen O'Malley.
TRACKLISTING:
01. Stacte.3A
02. Stacte.3B
Persona
Format: CD
Catalogue Number: BT02
Originally released in 2000 as a limited vinyl only album, 'Persona' is now available on CD for the first time.
'Persona' was recorded in February 2000, just a week after the 'Afternoon Tea' collaboration with Fennesz, Pimmon, Pita and Keith Rowe. Utilizing a raw and spontaneous approach like the 'Stacte' series of solo releases, Ambarchi recorded the pieces on 'Persona' at home in a day, only using his guitar, a handful of effect pedals and a boombox as a monitor(!). Considered to be a 'sister' release to Ambarchi's acclaimed 'Suspension' album on Touch, the material on 'Persona' (originally released on E.R.S. in a tiny edition of 300) was only heard by a handful of listeners. From the late 90's his experiments in guitar abstraction and extended technique led to a more personal and unique soundworld and 'Persona' was an early document of this direction. Here, the pieces are hesitant and tense extended songforms, located in the cracks between several schools: modern electronics and processing; laminal improvisation and minimalism; and hushed, pensive songwriting. It recalls the deceptive simplicity and temporal suspensions of composers such as Morton Feldman and Alvin Lucier, and the physicality of rock music, stripped back to its bare bones, abstracted and replaced with pure signal.
Remastered in December 2008 and with artwork designed by Stephen O'Malley
TRACKLISTING:
01. Alma
02. Vogler
03. Persona
Black Truffle web site: www.blacktrufflerecords.com
Yokohama Triennale show
OREN AMBARCHI/STEPHEN O'MALLEY/JIM O'ROURKE TRIO
+
POP - ZBIGNIEW KARKOWSKI/PETER REHBERG
SUN SEPT 21
YOKOHAMA TRIENNALE
RED BRICK WAREHOUSE NO.1
1-1 Shinko, Naka-ku,
Yokohama-shi,
Kanagawa-ken 231-0001
Japan
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
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