Oren Ambarchi is one of a growing number of guitarists
whose music betrays little sign of its instrumental
origin: Christian Fennesz,
Christopher Willitts and Joseph Suchy may also be numbered
as members of this relatively new clan, though practitioners
such as Keith Rowe and Fred Frith have already certainly
set sufficient precedents in the past couple of decades.
Ambarchi’s first track on his third release for
Touch begins in test-tone territory with smooth, neutral
hums gently repeated like the electronic memory of a
lighthouse’s fog warning. All the activity on
Corkscrew occurs at the edges of these hums
whose momentary lips and curls delineate the border
between silence and sound. These clicks serve as a sonic
foregrounding mechanism, provoking memories of unwanted
vinyl scratches though without the associated frustration.
Somehow the contrast established between warm tone and
unpredictable click emphasises awareness of both elements
and maintains attention over the track’s nine-plus
minutes. Corkscrew imparts the dreambound feeling
of surging through thick fog in the middle of the night,
no star- or moonlight available to guide you.
The Girl With The Silver Eyes retains its predecessors’
hums and clicks, but stirs in note chimes and clusters
which bear a greater resemblance to chandelier crystals
falling in slow motion than notes sounded on anything
as mundane as a guitar. The result is strange and just
a little unsettling. Simultaneously somnambulant and
purposeful, if a Faberge egg were ever recorded opening
and closing via the agency of its mysteriously intricate
clockwork this might be the result. Remedios The
Beauty borrows its title from a character in Gabriela
Garcia Marquez’s novel One Hundred Years Of
Solitude and reveals a more direct melodicism than
its predecessors. The first five minutes might be described
as a folk song heard through the sonic equivalent of
a frosted pane of glass, or the sensation of stroking
a tiger’s fur whilst wearing surgeon’s gloves.
Later, small bells or gongs sound like wine glass rims
circled by tongue-wetted fingers. There’s a sense
of leisurely (the track is fifteen and a half minutes
long) progression, which navigates a gradual change
of mood from carefree to subtly threatened. The final
track, Stars Aligned, Webs Spun is very minimal,
more like a ritual echo which accrues the gentlest of
reverberations over its twenty-minute length.
Grapes From The Estate is a beautiful piece
of work, simultaneously mysterious and accessible. Its
contemplativeness creates a space within which the listener
can react to the music without a sense of being manipulated
by the normal dynamics of melodic or even ambient music.
Recommended.
Colin Buttimer
4/5 |
