S/D: Oren Ambarchi (and projects)

wow he is great.

'highway of diamonds' minus the last minute or so is a keeper. i've been mixing it into other tracks and it works really well.

he also has the bestest set of myspace affilates i've ever seen. i wish they were my friends.

grapes from the estate is really great.

New one is good

agree

yeah its excellent

is this the one with Thomas Brinkmann?

no 'audience of one' on touch

Ah, okay. I passed up buying Triste yesterday is that good? I love Brinkmann so I'm thinking about that one. Is 'Audience of One' quite droney?

i wouldnt say so, no. large parts of it are on youtube if youre curious

Triste is good, droney and monolithic. Audience of One takes some risks with his sound and i think pulls it off.

'audience of one' is so so good. i think i need it and fennesz black sea on vinyl.

i agree! about audience of one. love it. got the double vinyl in the mail the other day. i don't always love all his stuff. sometimes i just you know "respect" it or whatever. also got the power trio live thing in the mail with him on drums and o'malley sunnn((((((000000000000 guy on bass and haino on guitar. its okay. mostly for haino guitar solos.

i always catch myself wondering why i don't order from forced exposure like all the time when i browse their site. they're so reasonable! but reasonable is the same as expensive if you're broke. i should uh plan ahead, like budget that shit out. they still have all the soundways lps in stock. *SIGH*

I gather Audience of One is a departure from the pure-tone processed guitar stuff?

I'm just starting to get into last year's Imikuzushi with OA on drums, Haino on guitar, and Jim O'Rourke on bass.

audience of one is a mix of sounds/styles. this is one of the more beautiful things i've heard in a while:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUa-lVFJlR0

it reminds me of BPB's 'careless love'.. just slightly. agreed it's nice

Audience of One may be the best thing he's done!

I just listened to this today: http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/17974-oren-ambarchi-keiji-haino-jim-orourke-now-while-its-still-warm-let-us-pour-in-all-the-mystery/

I think it's mostly great, much better imo than Imikuzushi, although maybe I'm something of a conservative/traditionalist for thinking so. I finally feel like their collaboration lives up to their combined talents. Their ideas are cohering into more clearly structured pieces, sometimes even songs with (really good) hooks and bass riffs and grooves. I love Haino's voice.

Btw, what's up with Pitchfork's numerical ratings. I don't think there's a critical word in that review, yet the album only gets a 7.7.

keep perspective, mane; one of the foremost experimental rock combos doesn't merit BNM, what would that do for the brand? :P

they kinda have a hierarchy / capping system in effect for genre work i think, sund4r

album sounds amazing though

(as in it sounds like it would be amazing, not that I've actually heard it)

The 30 minute track on Audience of One reminds me a lot of Supersilent. I'm having trouble finding more messy jazz like this. Are there any other bands I can try?

might suggest burning star core, graveyards, close erase, humcrush, the "object" series records on locust records, selected circle records (infektio, arkades, tower), various rune grammofon releases, both the giovanni domenico/arve henriksen/tatsuhisa yamamoto releases, organum & eddie prevost "flayed", ashtray navigations, alice coltrane's "universal consciousness", the dead c. depends on whether you're after excoriant bedsit 4-track variants or the po-faced scandi fusion type, or the OG impulse records / miles "black beauty live @ fillmore west" / weather report "live in tokyo" varieties.

Not sure what "excoriant bedsit" means, but i think it's more the scandi fusion type I am after.

Thanks for the recommendations. I will check these out.

seemingly i've lost my disc of "suspension". just have an empty cover here. could somebody please tell me what the picture is on the backface of the disc so i know what i'm looking for? (brain says red /orange apples, like the cover, but that seems too easy an answer somehow)

New album Quixotism is very good. Strings, tablas, drummachine, small rhythmic differences. I like it.

i still haven't found my disc of "suspension".
i think i gone done put it in the wrong box.
i'd be obliged if one of y'all generous folks could pop it out & be so kind as to tell me what the picture on the disc is.
it'd be mighty helpful to an old duffer !

Listening to Quixoticism for the first time. Gets off to a slow start (or maybe I was just feeling impatient) but really settles into something nice.

Er, Quixotism.

The new Nazoranai lp is another brilliant release, they have been on fire this year.

Yeah, that Nazorani is wonderful. I finally heard the Haino/O'Rourke/Ambarchi from earlier this year, Only Wanting to Melt Beautifully... and thought it was a little bit of a letdown by comparison (and compared to some of other recent ones from that trio).

Nice. Didn't know about this one.

http://images.junostatic.com/full/CS558467-01A-BIG.jpg

this new one with Haino and O'Rourke is good

well the first track on Hubris has some lovely Future Days qualities to it.

The whole album is good, really.

absolutely, only just got to the awesome 3rd track.

album rules

I love how it in album cover, name and song titles seem like a followup to Quixotism. For a musician that does a shitload of projects, he is really good at making them seem as if they make sense.

thanks for the heads up, this new one sounds awesome.

wow, hubris pt. 3 totally just blew me away. can anyone recommend something similar, by ambarchi or others?

i wish i could - it's really, really good

i am not very familiar with his work, but i've been giving myself a crash course because i'm going to see him play next weekend (https://lampo.org/archive/oren-ambarchi-2018/)

new, in a not dissimilar vein

https://a-ton.bandcamp.com/album/panama-suez

ooh, thanks for that.
i'm excited to explore his discography because he seems to be a hub that connects to so many different kinds of musicians and kinds of music, not unlike brian eno.

The Just Reproach, with John Tilbury, is one of my favorite recordings (of either artist)

everything Oren releases is fucking dope

Rideau is my pick for (Berthling's) Tape.

Tonbruket's Nubian Swimtrip would be my suggestion for a Werliin record.

For more minimal improv grooves, Nik Bartsch's Ronin Rhythm Records has a lot of titles worth investigating.

The Time is a Mountain record from 2013 is good - features both Berthling & Werliin.

Good call, Chinaski. This is excellent, kinda like the midpoint of US and UK post-rock.

not involving oren ambarchi but a beautiful release on black truffle

https://blacktruffle.bandcamp.com/album/mumbai-04021996

He also released a beautiful new album himself yesterday.

Yeah, Shebang is really great, one of the best in the krautrock stuff he's been doing the last 10 years or so.

his new album is great

This AOTY contender for me, totally beautiful and up there with The Necks' best material.

Yeah, I might like this one even more than Ghosted, which is saying a lot

Was just listening to Ghosted yesterday - such a good record, total speculation but feels like it is at least partly a reflection on the Necks of the mid-to-late 1990s - when they were a little more moored to four square rhythms - guessing Oren would’ve seen em a bunch around that time - Harbourside Brasserie Necks vibe, if anyone happens to be a Sydney local!

I had never heard of this guy, Ghosted and Shebang are both very engaging. Lots going on despite apparent simplicity/minimalism.

Yes both albums and especially Shebang are reminiscent of Hanging Gardens or Drive-By era.

I think I prefer Ghosted by a smidgen, but only because I've spent more time with it than Shebang. Both are rhythmically lovely in a way I wasn't expecting, mostly because I'm more familiar with Oren's more abstract/ambient works. My expectations are likely coloured by the fact that Jim O'Rourke was my initial gateway into Oren's work.

Looking forward to checking out Time Is a Mountain thanks to the suggestion upthread.

Somehow, Shebang wasn't doing it for me when they were dripping out the tracks one at a time, but as a whole piece, I love it.

Well, Ghosted is rad partly just because Berthling & Werliin are such an incredible rhythm section. It's Fire! without Gustafsson which is fine!
And Berthling plays some lovely bass on Shebang too, among the other guests.

I like the acoustic bass on Ghosted.

jeez this is too good

supergroup does partly cloudy skies

the last track burrows into this blue mood where all the twelve strings and abraham's piano feel like they should be framing something, but nothing "central" is there .. just this endlessly shifting, ghostly presence of sound in the middle. i'm always listening for jim o'rourke's contributions in these kinds of situations and that sort of harsh is it ring modulated synth that appears toward the end there is brutal in a way. there's real heart to this, a lot of human presence, but it's also at a remove, its power feels directed toward emphasizing ephemerality.

Shebang is ridiculously good — wow!

really enjoying this

i'm listening to this a lot, it's kind of addicting.

had the stoned thought today that the whole piece feels like it's the soundtrack to a single human life. the brightness at first and then the kinetic deepening, the appearance of the drum strokes which seem to mark days, the longer blend of elements on top that are like strokes of personality, the reoccurence of those strokes, the little eddies throughout, the downshift into the vigor and seriousness of the 3rd and 4th parts, how there isn't really a climax but just this beautiful deepening/opening and then the brief release at the end.

when abraham's piano appears at the beginning of iii, it sounds so urgent - i don't know if i've ever felt such a sense of urgency at the sound of piano before haha.

and one minor quibble with the reynolds review, the last piece is in the same key as the first one, just minor not major afaict

overall a very nice and otm review as usual

which review?

sorry, sherburne, duh, *farts*

this one: https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/oren-ambarchi-shebang/

i love how this is both calm and very intricate, with lots of moods represented but at a distance.

is a lot of ecm stuff really like this? divine quiet epic music?

i should go back to those early necks records.

i think oren ambarchi's guitar work is definitely the glue that holds everything together, it's really central to how iv evolves especially.

The last Necks record, ‘Three’, was somewhat in this vein. Otherwise the closest fits are ‘Hanging Gardens’, ‘Drive-By’ and ‘Chemist’ I think.

In terms of ECM, I’d try Nik Bartsch’s Ronin and Mobile projects.

thanks

One of the Mobile albums is even called “Ritual Groove Music” which is a great description of this general style.

oh wow 'ritual groove music' is sounding fantastic

Check the rym list for zen-funk, map. Enjoy the rabbit hole!

I wish "Hubris" was a genre so I could listen to stuff like it all day (now I just listen to "Hubris" all day)

i would like him to come to USA soon