Oren Ambarchi's music, like most things I enjoy, is something that I came across totally by accident. In my usual scrounging for curious, off-color stuff, he kept coming up... whether trying to get better acquainted with artists like Jim O'Rouke or perusing lists of recommended experimental albums, he was a recurring cast member. It wasn't until 2022's Ghosted that I finally became familiar with his sound, and again, not because I intended to, but because I was looking up Andreas Werliin, for some now lost to time, and happened upon the album which he had a hand in bringing to life. Like most things I've discovered by accident, I was actually very intimidated by his work once I started to come to terms with how different it was from what else I'd previously heard, and I became unsure that I understood it properly enough to comment on it. I've been listening to his Shebang record on and off since it was released two years ago, but I never really had the nerve to sketch out a tangible perspective on it... that is, until I looked up his Wikipedia page and saw his quote about learning the guitar. Apparently, one of Oren's primary instruments is not something he was ever formally trained in; one simply caught his eye one day, and he decided to start hitting it with drumsticks. The part of the quote that really sticks with me is this: "I never wanted to learn to play it properly, it was an object as much as an instrument." Wow... that hits me like a lightning bolt. It resonates with me because that's more or less how I blog as well. I have no credentials and I have no desire for them either. I simply find things that interest me and play with them to see if they have any potential; if it stirs loose an idea that I think is intriguing, I'll write about it- but I never want what I say to be definitive or reduce the potential of my object of examination to a vulgar basket of commodifiable conclusions. I write to try and give form to an experience, and I want your encounter with my writing to inspire you to form your own experiences the way that I have. As I said, Shebang is a record I've been holding onto for a couple of years now, but I've finally decided to say something about it because it occurred to me that I will never fully unravel its mysteries and that I really don't think I want to. It's inexhaustible, and so am I. It takes me to a different place every time I listen to it, Oren's dancing guitar chords are like variegated escalator steps below my feet, rising to match my steps as I am lifted onto yet another shifting, perceptual vista. I'm breathing in its low-key voltaic verve and discharging a flurry of fireflies. It tastes like marshmallows with the zest of an orange peel. It paints my lips purple and my eyelashes red, like I'm getting dressed for Mardi Gras, like I'm getting ready to kiss the moon good night. It makes me want to witness the changing of the celestial guards like a rooster on a telephone wire. Oren plays jazz in the kind of way that a drop of dew sliding from leaf to leaf down the length of a tree could be said to capture the spirit of jazz, or the way a spider building a web between two adjacent crags 10 meters above the crash of ocean spray against a bluff could be called a composer of a certain fashion. The fragile balance and rhythm of life's inextinguishable motion is the rail of his orbit, the cultivation of a sort of peace you find in freefall without any expectation of touching the ground again. It's not the whole of life's gran exhibition, but hopefully, it's enough to put some wind in your sails.
* In March I am writing an album review for every day of the month inspired by a different color. Today's color raw umber strikes me as a hue of clay. How this connects with Oren Ambarchi's Shebang, is mostly due to the album cover. See, if you were to combine many of the colors in that delicious-looking slice of cake in the right proportions, you'd get a very earthy-looking concoction. And since different color stripes are often used in combination to indicate the diversity of humanity, and in combining them, you get clay, I thought this was a nice little throughline that invokes the common substance of humanity, as clay is said to be the primordial element that makes up the human body. It's an appealing sentiment and one that intersects with the themes of the album quite well.
