Oren Ambarchi - Triste

Experimental guitarist Oren Ambarchi is one of the avant-garde’s most ambitious musical chameleons. His discography includes gorgeous ambient drones, abrasive electronic soundscapes, and improv clicks and pops, among many other styles of fringe music. However, through the wide array of output, Ambarchi always utilizes the familiar six stringed instrument as his source. Triste is no exception, as he concocts a patient album of minimalism. Triste, itself, is an excerpt of 40 minutes from a live set that Ambarchi performed in 2001. Separated into two tracks, the first is a very slow moving accumulation of gentle bass swells that emphasize the attack and decay of each sound into silence. For how spare it is, the track is incredibly moving and the stronger of the two, whereas the other features background hiss and audible scrapes and clicks that amount at the track’s end. Triste is rounded out by two shorter remixes by Tom Recchion that feature an alternatively beautiful take on Ambarchi’s minimal palette. Although not quite as beautifully packaged as the 220 gram vinyl version first issued in 2003, Triste as a compact disc offers sparkling clear production of Ambarchi’s manipulated guitar notes. This disc not only adds yet another dimension to Ambarchi’s extensive discography but holds a tremendously amount of gorgeous music and silence in its four tracks. [www.southernlord.com]