Oren Ambarchi - Cooked

Keen listeners who have dug below the surface of Oren Ambarchi’s triple-digit discography know that alongside hypnotic minimalism, veins of irreverent and joyously wayward exploration run deep. Cooked is something of a landmark in Oren’s work, bringing this gloriously cuckoo sensibility right into the heart of his most high-profile solo work. Carrying on the grand Ambarchi tradition of meticulously constructed all-star studio jams (which reached new heights with Shebang, his 2022 Drag City debut), Cooked brings together collaborators from Australia, Germany, Japan and Sweden for two side-long epics where the foot keeps tapping even as the mind boggles.

Beginning with piano ripples from Eiko Ishibashi, after only a few seconds “Hidden Tableau” takes an unexpected turn with the entrance of a groaning synthetic voice (created by Konrad Sprenger, production mastermind at the helm for Shebang and this piece). The first half of the piece develops as an oddly moving concerto for this moaning and growling ghost in the machine and a delicate backdrop of piano, organ-like tones, and Oren’s signature shimmering Leslie guitar. As the beautifully flexible swing of Joe Talia’s drums enters, the harmonies fill out into woozy clouds and the synthetic voice seems to morph into something approaching a mutant trumpet. In a left turn that seems to come out of nowhere yet make an inexplicable kind of sense, the piece is then overtaken by patterns of intricate guitar and synthetic arpeggios. These might be Jim O’Rourke on synth, but who knows? If we learned anything from Simian Angel and Shebang, it’s that almost anything we hear could come from Oren’s guitar.