On a day when your transmission drops to the asphalt and the humidity's enough to fry brains, Oren Ambarchi's resonating, disembodied guitarisms establish a soothing alternate universe. With his third solo project for Touch-- following 2001's Suspension and 2000's Insulation-- the Australian guitarist unwraps the warm chilliness of past efforts, organizing a languid, abstract world of lulling harmonics and slow-drip tones with the on/off attenuation of strings, bells and percussion.
Raised in Sydney, and of Sephardic Jewish heritage, Ambarchi's performed and recorded with labelmate Christian Fennesz, Sachiko M, John Zorn, Keith Rowe, Phill Niblock, Toshimaru Nakamura, Martin Ng, and others. But while he's been performing live since 1986, guitar in tote, I'd prefer to keep Ambarchi as a one-dimensional wraith flittering about my cramped apartment: Nothing like seeing a guy sweating over knobs and cables to drain the magic from twilight overtones.
As is, Grapes from the Estate's ambient clusters navigate a field of emptiness. The first composition, "Corkscrew", would make an ideal soundtrack for one of Bill Viola's single-channel watery videos, especially the moments in which a microscopic lens outlines the surprisingly complex contours of each droplet. The piece consists of electric guitars, but sounds like an echoed tone generator, the occasional circles surrounding a submerged stone, or a fading gong.
"Girl with the Silver Eyes" bulks up with Hammond organ and drums, but casts a similar shadow. The most noticeable difference is a fairly distinguished bass overload. These gentle, heavy pulsations are the only cacophonous wavelengths on this album, and they're pretty minor. Otherwise, at the near-midway point, regulatory brushes and snare wraps surface, followed by an intermittent kabuki melody that rises like an afterthought. The track resolves as the pantomime of a quietly corroding music box unleashes its last gasps.
"Remedios the Beauty" opens with a hook and maintains the "riff" throughout: Mixing acoustic and electric guitars, piano, bells, drums, and the strings of Veren Grigorov and Peter Hollo, it comes off like sheets of crystalline snow spiked with a looped Four Tet yarn or a twangy western Matmos two-step at its center. Entering the pop realm, it's the most obviously musical, least enigmatic of the compositions. Still, it works in setting up the starkness of the final 20-minute "Stars Aligned, Web Spun", which brings the album full-circle. Ambarchi, again alone with this electric guitars, ups the enveloping absence of "Corkscrew", doubling its duration. Over time, the sprawl unfurls like found inhuman frequencies: Ambarchi's patience in allowing calm tones to live healthy, long lives creates a blinking grid. It's what I imagine a black and white Lite Brite would sound like if it were allowed a temporary whisper.
No matter how camouflaged, a guitar is a guitar. Though it may be hard to believe this flickering six-string sunspot emerged from an instrument that established Steve Vai and Yngwie Malmsteen, Ambarchi makes his solo talk without resorting to a single spell-breaking finger-tap, mathy scale, or screeching whammy bar. Wonder what he could do with "Hot for Teacher"...
