Since Oren Ambarchi traded in his drums for the guitar, he has released over 50 albums in the past 20 years. With his piercing sonic exploration of lyricism and noise, Ambarchi proves himself over and over, not just as a self-sufficient solo musician, unspooling fragile melodies and textures, played on the guitar and via effects, with deep attention, but also as a discerning composer. Throughout his prolific career, he has collaborated with numerous prominent and varied musical voices, such Stephen O’Malley, Jim O’Rourke, Thomas Brinkmann, Ricardo Villalobos and many others. This will be his second visit to Slovenia, after his performance warming up for The Necks a few years back.
His pieces are indefinable poetic forms, placed in the cracks between various schools of thought – contemporary electronica and processing, improvisation and minimalism, mysterious, melancholy poetry, deceptive simplicity and temporary suspension. In them, we can find references to Morton Feldman and Alvin Lucier, as well as rock music, slowed down to its foundations, abstracted and replaced with pure signal.
By the late 1990s, through his exploration of guitar abstraction and mastering his technique, he had built a unique personal audio world, which has recently begun including a broad array of instruments. On his latest releases, such as Grapes from the Estate and The Pendulum’s Embrace, Ambarchi also plays the glass harmonica, strings, chimes, piano, drums and percussion, creating fragile structures as light as air, gently cohabitating alongside the deep, wall-shaking bass from his guitar.
He has performed and recorded with numerous artists, such as Fennesz, Otomo Yoshihide, Pimmon, Keiji Haino, John Zorn, Rizili, Voice Crack, Jim O’Rourke, Keith Rowe, Phill Niblock, Dave Grohl, Gunter Muller, Evan Parker, z’ev, Toshimaru Nakamura, Peter Rehberg, Merzbow and others. Since 2004, he has collaborated with American post-metal band Sunn 0))).
His compositions have been released by international labels such as Touch, Southern Lord, Table of the Elements and Tzadik. In 2003, his live release Triste received an honorary mention in the Digital Music category at the Prix Ars Electronica festival.
Organisation: MoTA – Museum of Transitory Art in coproduction with Kino Šiška.
