Oren Ambarchi for Eclectic

Originally from Sydney, Australia, Oren Ambarchi (b. 1969) is a globetrotting musician and composer, known for his deconstructions of rock music and the unique sonic signature of his digitally-processed electric guitar. Passionate about the acts of making and collecting records, Ambarchi was drawn to music at a young age, beginning as a drummer obsessed with classic rock before becoming entranced with jazz (both free and fusion). Ambarchi's performing career launched in 1986, playing standards by Miles Davis and John Coltrane in jazz ensembles before he moved to New York City later in the decade to study Jewish mysticism at a rabbinical college in Brooklyn. Ambarchi's interest in the guitar was piqued in 1993 after witnessing a performance by Fush*tsusha's Keiji Haino at the Knitting Factory, beginning his lifelong fascination with the instrument and all the ways its tone could be electronically manipulated beyond recognition. Though rooted in the worlds of free improvisation, noise and experimental extended guitar technique, Ambarchi has greatly expanded his musical borders to become an exciting purveyor of 21st-century progressive rock.

As eclectic in his minimalist artistic approach as with his choice of collaborators, Ambarchi's discography sits at over a hundred albums, EPs or singles of electroacoustic music, drone, jazz-rock, progressive electronic, post-rock and krautrock. Ambarchi's recordings have been issued by dozens of varied esteemed labels like Touch, Tzadik, Southern Lord, Editions Mego and his very own Black Truffle (in operation since 2009). Ambarchi has performed around the world live and in studio with a wide array of the finest musicians in their fields like Fennesz, Keith Rowe, Phill Niblock, Z'EV, Charlemagne Palestine and Merzbow, with a particular number of avant-prog arists such as Otomo Yoshihide, Fred Frith, Zu's Massimo Pupillo, Fire! and John Zorn, who was one of his earliest supporters during his time in New York. As of this writing, Ambarchi has released twelve live LPs with his noisy free-psych-rock trio featuring Keiji Haino and fellow improv icon Jim O'Rourke. His love of low-end frequencies led to a stint performing in cosmic-metal band Sunn O))), along with several ongoing group projects with their members Greg Anderson and Stephen O'Malley.

With krautrock one of his many loves, Ambarchi's travels also saw him rubbing shoulders with several legends both classic and modern. Former Can vocalist Damo Suzuki made a series of annual visits to Australia from 2002 to 2012, with Ambarchi acting as one of the peripatetic musician's four "sound carriers" for a 2004 Network performance at a record store in Melbourne (with a live LP released as The Swiftsure Session in 2017). Suzuki later returned the favour by sitting in with Ambarchi's Glenn Branca/Rhys Chatham-influenced project the Husbands. Guru Guru drummer Mani Neumeier also made a couple live Australian appearances in 2007 and 2009, with Ambarchi participating on guitar for each, demonstrated on Neumeier's 2011 CD Smoking the Contracts. In 2013, Ambarchi played a set with British kraut-droners Neil Campbell and Vibracathedral Orchestra's Michael Flower at the TUSK Festival, documented and released on vinyl the following year. Ambarchi also spent 2013 on stage and in the studio with kraut-adjacent guitar vanguard Richard Pinhas, contributing to the latter's solo LP Desolation Row and cooperating for the 2014 album Tikkun. From 2015 to 2017, Ambarchi lent his talents as drummer for three live sets with another space-guitar pioneer, Manuel Göttsching and his Ash Ra Tempel Experience, joining forces with fellow fans Shags Chamberlain and Ariel Pink to play material from Schwingungen and Seven Up (the first show later released in 2017 as Live in Melbourne).

Ambarchi's early material, beginning with 1998's Stacte, leaned more towards free improv, glitch and reductionism in the vein of his inspirations Alvin Lucier, Alan Licht and labels like Mego and Staubgold, though fans of droning progressive electronic like Andrew Chalk and Mirror should gravitate towards 2001's Suspension and Persona and 2002's Mort Aux Vaches. Compared by critics to Labradford, Grails and Bohren & der Club of Gore, 2004's Grapes from the Estate and 2007's In the Pendulum's Embrace were groundbreaking works in his oeuvre which blurred the lines between his electroacoustic guitar ambience and jazzy post-rock minimalism. 2012 was an especially prolific year in which Ambarchi began to truly let loose his progressive inclinations, mostly leaving behind the academic free noise of his younger days for a more colourful sound palette, continuing in this direction up to the present day. Notable albums were Audience of One and its assortment of kraut/avant/electronic experiments (primarily its centrepiece "Knots") and its follow-up, Sagittarian Domain, a single extended track of motorik minimalism inspired by Faust, Mahavishnu Orchestra, Gavin Bryars and the coda to Prince's "Purple Rain." Ambarchi never left his prog-electronic inclinations behind, demonstrated in full-lengths like 2015's Sleepwalker's Conviction, 2017's Hotel Record (made with his partner crys cole) and 2019's Orgon Day (with Mark Fell, Will Guthrie and Sam Shalabi). He pivoted with 2019's Simian Angel, an ambient synthesis of Ambarchi's favourite 20th century Brazilian and jazz-fusion music, created with percussionist Cyro Baptista, in which British magazine The Wire detected Jon Hassell/Fourth World influences and described it as "an imaginary congress of late 1970s Cluster and ECM aesthetics." Ambarchi also continued to explore his minimalist post-rock/krautrock leanings with 2014's Quixotism, 2016's Hubris and 2022's Shebang, as well as collaborative LPs Aithein (2016; with Stefano Pilia and Massimo Pupillo) and the Ghosted duology (2022, 2024; with Fire!'s Johan Berthling and Andreas Werliin). 

 

"Sagittarian Domain" (2012)

"Simian Angel" (2019)

"Hubris" (2016)

"Hotel Record" with crys cole (2017)

"Shebang" (2022)

"Behold" with Jim O'Rourke (2015)

"Grapes From the Estate" (2004)

"Tikkun" with Richard Pinhas (2014)

"Oglon Day" with Mark Fell, Will Guthrie and Sam Shalabi (2019)

"Ghosted" with Johan Berthling and Andreas Werliin (2022)

"Ghosted II" with Johan Berthling and Andreas Werliin (2024)