Review: Oren Ambarchi at The Luminaire

By London_DaveK Last edited 188 months ago
Review: Oren Ambarchi at The Luminaire

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Of any day of the week, ambient minimalism perhaps works best on a Monday. The noisy whirlwind of the start of the working week brought to a halt by its simple calm. Whilst Oren Ambarchi's Monday performance at The Luminaire began as relaxed as we expected, it soon grew more aggressive and dark.

The hushed tones of his guitar snaked their way through a seemingly endless series of pedals and effects boxes. What started as low rumbling gradually built into an oscillating storm. Before long it was difficult to discern which sounds Ambarchi was generating and which emanated from the building itself as its rafters shook under the pressure of the bass vibrations.

From listening to his records, we're familar with an Ambarchi that applies a studied precision to his guitar in order to carefully extract its most subtle tones. In this live performance he started that way, but finished loudly with full force. No doubt influenced by the time he's spent recently playing with Stephen O'Malley in Gravetemple, this was a noisier Ambarchi than we're accustomed to hearing, but one we hope to hear more from soon.

Photo of Oren Ambarchi at The Luminaire taken from daveknapik's Flickr photostream.

Last Updated 15 July 2008