Of course the fact that as a guitar player my interests/aims are very
(distressingly) similar to Ambarchi's certainly affects my perception of
his work. Judging his work from that perspective (and by my own
experience with "prepared" guitar) I find his efforts are extremely
succesful, enjoyable and rather unique. I find it fascinating that he can
appropriate the sound of old school musique concrete so closely and
that he's doing this with a GUITAR in real time AND without a computer !!!
I always thought the whole aim of the prepared guitar school was to
produce something which resembles electronic or tape music and in my
opinion his work is the most succesful I've heard in this area.
Looking at things chronologically, the most recent cd I heard before
Ambarchi's which treaded similar ground was Kevin Drumm's first album on
Perdition Plastics. While I enjoyed that one a lot and I think it's
an important piece of work I find Ambarchi's work more rewarding and
captivating. It's sort of like a Mego record vs. an INA-GRM record.
You know I always wonder how non-musicians can enjoy bebop or something
like Eliott Carter's music so maybe having some personal insight into what
the artist is trying to achieve makes a lot of difference in how you
perceive his/her work.
I guess this doen't really answer your question (if there was one), if
you don't like it you don't like it, but I tried to explain how I feel
about this album.
Andrei
On Fri, 18 Feb 2000, Sean Cooper wrote:
quoted 15 lines Oren Ambarchi - insulation (Touch)
> >Oren Ambarchi - insulation (Touch)
> >I don't understand how he can pull this stuff off in real time without
> >a computer.
>
> every review of this i've read focuses more or less (mostly more) on this
> very observation. while i'm as prone to such admiring responses as the next
> person, i have to ask: is this enough? i have listened to this cd a number
> of times, and it's mostly left me cold. as a fan of everyone from risset
> and parmegiani to o'rouke and rehberg/bauer i can't really be accused of
> merely "not liking this sort of thing." there are passages where i feel the
> compositions do invite other forms of appreciation than the merely
> technical, but i find them few and far between. an alternate perspective, i
> suppose...
>
> sc