The trio of Australian, Berlin-based guitarist-electronics player Oren Ambarchi with the mighty Swedish rhythm section of the Fire! Trio – bassist Johan Berthling and drummer Andreas Werliin, was about to happen for over a decade. Ambarchi has been collaborating with the Fire! trio and recorded together In The Mouth – A Hand (Rune Grammofon, 2012) and the Fire! trio (including Mats Gustafsson) guested in Ambarchi’s Hubris Live (Black Truffle, 2021). Finally, Ambarchi, Berthling and Werliin recorded their debut album, Ghosted, in 2021 (Drag City, 2022).
It was not a conventional guitar-bass-drums trio. Ambarchi’s guitar sounds more like an organ than a guitar. The bass and drums danced in a simultaneous insistent and relaxed pulse and the trio’s telepathic dynamics played with fresh fields of fusion: funk-jazz heads, polyrhythmic skeletons, ambient pastorals, post-kraut drones and shimmering soundtrack reveries. After recording Ghosted it was clear that a new band was founded. The trio toured Europe and developed its close dynamics and its effective, hypnotic grooves.
Ghosted II continues where Ghosted ended and just perfects the trio’s hypnotic and deeply addictive, super-chill and uber-jittery minimal grooves and drones. It was recorded at the same place, Studio Rymden in Stockholm, by the same sound engineer, Daniel Bengtsson, and mixed again by Ambarchi and Joe Talia, Talia mastered it at Good Mixture in Melbourne, and Pål Dybwik contributed, again, a well-distinctive cover art.
The four pieces are the first takes and all were improvised with next-to-nothing prepared to go in and with minimal overdubs after they’ve laid things down but the grooves are deeper and richer. Single words like «Santana» or «Police» served as working titles for the well-structured pieces. The dynamics are different in every piece and introduce new guitar sounds of Ambrachi, but you can play the four pieces in repeat endlessly without wishing to end their relaxing and intoxicating effects. There is a delicate, untimely balance and immediate and communal vibe in everything this trio plays, driving its minimalist, magical grooves beautifully through the process of succumbing to and then transcending guilty pleasures.
Eyal Hareuveni
Oren Ambarchi (guitar, electronics), Johan Berthling (bass), Andreas Werliin (drums)
