Menstruation Sisters
Members: Oren Ambarchi
Tongue Tied
Oren Ambarchi and Johan Berthling are two masters of reducing music’s peak intensities to their root meaning. Oren’s early solo guitar works rendered this process with an instantly recognisable combination of sine wave throb and precisely controlled attack that has bloomed in maturity – concentrating the ecstatic potential of the guitar solo by folding it back on itself and stacking the points of greatest liminal intensity into waves of powerfully psychedelic excess while also encompassing …
Hubris
CD version. "Hubris continues the exploration of relentless, driving rhythms heard on Oren Ambarchi's Sagittarian Domain (EMEGO 144CD/LP, 2012) and Quixotism (EMEGO 202CD/LP, 2014). Where those records looked to krautrock and techno for their starting points, the side-long opening track on Hubris begins from the perhaps unlikely inspirations of disco and new wave, drawing particularly from Ambarchi's love of Wang Chung's soundtrack to William Friedkin's To Live and Die in L.A. (1985). Leaving b…
I wonder if you noticed
The remarkable series of releases from the trio of Keiji Haino, Jim O'Rourke, and Oren Ambarchi continues with I wonder if you noticed "I'm sorry" Is such a lovely sound It keeps things from getting worse, which presents the entirety of an 80-minute set performed at Tokyo's SuperDeluxe in March 2014. While the trio's 2012 performance was divided into two releases (BT 011LP (2014) and BT 012LP (2015)), the single extended performance presented here ranges widely over terrain both new and fam…
Aithein
**restocked** Oren Ambarchi, Stefano Pilia, and Massimo Pupillo (Zu) team up for an instrumental trip bridging post-rock, drone, and improvisation. Limited 180-gram LP in silk-screened sleeve with artwork by Sara D'Uva. Includes download code. Since the late '90s Oren Ambarchi has been exploring new ground as composer and multi-instrumentalist (mainly focusing on guitar), fusing a wide range of influences and inspiration from improvisation, contemporary music, modern electronics, and rock…
Pale Calling
**restocked** Pale Calling presents the fruits of the first collaboration between Oren Ambarchi, Kassel Jaeger and James Rushford, recorded at GRM studios, Paris in 2014. Although drawing on aspects of each member's solo works, the trio mark out their own unique territory, a mysterious space of slowly cycling electronics, distracted vocal mumbles and often unidentifiable field recordings. These two side-long pieces are composed of distinct layers that gently rise up and recede, obeying a dream-l…
Tongue
Oren Ambarchi and Johan Berthling are two masters of reducing music's peak intensities to their root meaning. Oren's early solo guitar works rendered this process with an instantly recognisable combination of sine wave throb and precisely controlled attack that has bloomed in maturity - concentrating the ecstatic potential of the guitar solo by folding it back on itself and stacking the points of greatest liminal intensity into waves of powerfully psychedelic excess while also encompassing…
Glass Walking
Over the years the Menstruation Sisters have through a selective, but incredibly varied output of albums steadily built a reputation among music fans as a unique band. It was never a secret who the members of Menstruation Sisters were, yet the band's aura was shrouded in mystery and confusion, possibly because they would completely reinvent themselves with every new recorded statement. As a fan of the Menstruation Sisters you had to abandon everything you knew with each new piece of the puzzle.…
Shade Themes From Kairos
"Shade Themes from Kairos is a new iteration of the dream for all the guitar freaks out there, bringing together a couple of singular players together, just to see what happens. In this case, the players were old friends and collaborators Oren Ambarchi and Stephen O'Malley, playing in a space engineered and co-populated by Randall Dunn. From the top, Shade Themes from Kairos is resonant as a collective inquest in sound, with all the players deeply immersed within the panorama they are creating. …
Behold
Behold is the second collaborative release from Oren Ambarchi and Jim O'Rourke following the 2011 LP Indeed. Ambarchi and O'Rourke seamlessly blend field recordings, electronics, guitar, drums, and other acoustic instruments into a subtle combination of krautrock, minimalism, and classic free flowing electronics. Side A takes the listener into the Fourth World adventures pioneered by Jon Hassell on Fourth World Music Vol. I: Possible Musics (GB 019CD/LP), while the flip seems like an unlikel…
Live Knots
"Live Knots", Oren Ambarchi’s first release for PAN, presents two live realizations of ‘Knots’, the epic centrepiece of his Audience of One (Touch, 2012) release. Built on the interplay between Ambarchi’s swirling, guitar harmonics and the metronomic pulse and shifting accents of Joe Talia’s DeJohnette-esque drumming, the piece merges the organic push and pull of free improvisation with an overarching compositional framework.‘Tokyo Knots’ presents the complete recording of a duo performance of t…
Tea Time for Those Determined to Completely Exhaust Every Bit of
"At this point, it can justifiably be said that Keiji Haino, Jim O'Rourke and Oren Ambarchi have become one of the leading groups in experimental music. This, their sixth release, presents the entire second set of the trio's March 2013 concert at SuperDeluxe (the first set is available on Black Truffle as Only Wanting to Melt Beautifully Away Is It a Lack of Contentment That Stirs Affection for Those Things Said to Be as of Yet Unseen). While the first set of the evening saw the trio branch…
Only Wanting To Melt Beautifully Away Is It A Lack Of Contentmen
LP version. "Begun as a one-off collaboration in 2009, the trio of Keiji Haino, Jim O'Rourke and Oren Ambarchi has now become a solid working group, refining its craft through a series of annual concerts at Tokyo's legendary SuperDeluxe. Much of their recorded work has focused on their intense, ritualistic take on the rock power trio of electric guitar, bass and drums. Presenting the entire first set of the trio's March 2013 concert at SuperDeluxe (the second set will follow on Black Truffle lat…
Live at Tusk Festival 2013
An incredible document of an incredible set - the first-time trio of Oren Ambarchi, Neil Campbell and Mick Flower was a truly transcendent thing to behold at TUSK Festival 2013. Now you can hear it on vinyl too. Mixed and mastered by Joe Talia. Illustrations by Karen Constance (front) and Graeme Ross (back). "It's the clash of the improv-rock titans! Antipodean outsider guitar god Oren Ambarchi joined forces with Vibracathedralites Michael "Michael Flower" Flower and Neil "Astral Social Club" Ca…
Stacte karaoke
Two raw, ecstatic, face-melting guitar solos recorded in one take in the Ambarchi 'Stacte tradition'. This time around, Ambarchi is backed up by a badass rhythm section from Texas, and together they ride the endless riff into the goddamn sunset.
Sonja Henies Vei 31
“Sonja Henies Vei 31" is a profoundly moving document of the personal and artistic union between Crys Cole and Oren Ambarchi. Abandoning their usual instrumental artillery, both performers make themselves vulnerable to the listener, undertaking a committed exploration of pure physical gesture. Surrounding an explicitly intimate duo performance is a hazy collage of field recordings, tape hiss, metallic clinks and wandering voices. This forces the listener to hover in a disorienting psychological …
Amulet
Oren Ambarchi live recordings assembled on Cheryl Cole's iPhone at her house in Winnipeg. Not really, but it's that's how I first misread the description. Amulet actually presents two iPhone recordings assembled at Chez Cole, Winnipeg, July 2013 by the inestimable Oren Ambarchi. We've no further info but from what we can hear these are rudimentary iPhone recordings excerpted and crudely edited from a live performance (a shard of applause possibly gives the game away) between rippling, dynamicall…
The Just Reproach
The Just Reproach documents the second concert given by John Tilbury and Oren Ambarchi as a duo. When they first performed together in Reykjavik, Iceland in March 2012, the aptness of the pairing was evident. When they reprised the duo at London's Cafe OTO in September the same year in the concert presented here, the city was in the midst of a heatwave. With the air-conditioning turned off to accommodate the low volume of the performance, the uncomfortable squirming of the audience members…
Now While It's Still Warm Let Us Pour in All the Mystery
CD version. "Following on from 2012's acclaimed Imikizushi (BT 007CD/LP), Now While It's Still Warm Let Us Pour in All the Mystery is the fourth release from the established power trio of Keiji Haino, Jim O'Rourke, and Oren Ambarchi, recorded in January 2012 at their yearly concert at SuperDeluxe, Tokyo. While the trio's two previous double LP releases featured sprawling, side-long performances, the music here is presented in six shorter pieces, each one displaying a different side of the tr…
Connected
Presenting a new collaboration featuring Oren Ambarchi on guitar, the electronics of Robin Fox, and both performing on various other instruments. The music on this album came about as the result of the two being asked to co-compose the soundtrack for a new production by renowned Australian contemporary dance company Chunky Move for their Connected production. 'Chunky Move's artistic director Gideon Obarzanek was drawn to the organic and deeply musical qualities of Ambarchi's work and the digital…
Cat's Squirrel
"Cat's Squirrel is a live recording of Masami Akita and Oren Ambarchi's performance in Campbelltown, Australia in May 2012. Although Akita and Ambarchi have known one another since 1993 and performed together as part of larger ensembles, this was their first performance as a duo. Together they create a massive wall of sound that moves from the cavernous to the blisteringly psychedelic, laying down shifting low-end structures over which pointillist details ricochet across the stereo field. Akita …