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.Cooked is a long way from the spacious, light-dappled grooves of Ghosted, but Oren’s Swedish bandmates play starring roles here, with Johan Berthling’s double bass anchoring both sides, and drummer Andreas Werliin lending his delicate touch to the second piece, “Sleight of Hand”. Beginning with glistening layers of electric 12-string guitar, “Sleight of Hand” takes some key cues from electric Miles touchstones like “Feio” or his epic take on David Crosby’s “Guinnevere”, with Berthling’s sparse basslines punctuating an almost weightless cornucopia of shifting detail, glimmering with subtle contributions from Michiko Ogawa on shō and James Rushford on a panoply of acoustic keyboards. Suddenly, everything is overwhelmed by a knotty, hyper- complex ‘solo’ from Marcus Pal on digital synthesis, teleporting us to an alternate history where Allan Holdsworth traded the SynthAxe for Xenakis’ UPIC. Building with additional drums and percussion from Will Guthrie to a peak of sizzling intensity, the music then goes sideways into a gently surreal coda, where some distinctly Zawinul-esque chords and Fredrik Rasten’s guitar float over a sprightly rhythm box, the avian inventions of Swedish virtuoso whistler Isak Hedtjärn wafting atop the sunlit stew.It’s certainly Cooked, but not overcooked. Like 10cc in their prime, it layers a dizzying number of elements through intricate studio processes, yet somehow remains open, spontaneous, and intuitive, the whole thing suffused with an omnivorous love of music where everything is up for grabs. It’s a big call, but Cooked might just be the wildest ride that Oren Ambarchi has taken us on yet.  Hidden Tableau:Johan Berthling - Double bassEiko Ishibashi - PianoJim O'Rourke - SynthKonrad Sprenger - Voice synthesis, electronics & productionJoe Talia - DrumsSleight of Hand:Johan Berthling - Double BassWill Guthrie - Gamelan & drumsIsak Hedtjärn - WhistlingMichiko Ogawa - ShōMarcus Pal - Synthetic SoundFredrik Rasten - GuitarsJames Rushford - Celeste, piano & portative organAndreas Werliin - Drums

Koln, Germany around 1991. After a 40-minute train ride from Aachen, Christoph Heemann and Jim O'Rourke are sitting around with Jan St. Werner, C-Schulz, Frank Dommert and George Odjik. Heemann has brought with him a strange obscure disc (what else?) from Portugal by some group called "Plux Quba." Or is it the record? The label? Who knows, because no one here reads Portuguese, dummy! But what they do know when the needle hits the groove is that they've never heard anything like it. Attempts to cite reference points are soon given up, there are some similarities to Robert Ashley's later work, but even that is deceiving. It is simple, gentle, melodic, and yet completely alien. Originally released in 1988 on Ama Romanta, and reissued last in 1998 on Moikai.

Four faces to the sky, stretched to the max to finally allow us to be free.

Our favorite six-string shaman is waving that axe around again! Sir Richard Bishop wrenches forth fresh damnable truth and beauty from a musical kamikaze run through histories both known and unknown. Turning a gimlet eye to the American Primitive guitar style, Sir Rick applies his own bloodthirsty interpretive methods on a self-described “excursion into the dark woods,” to locate – and play along with – the Primitive’s moonshine-fed inner savage.

The invisible force meets the ancient object — two ensembles for the price of one and a half! Synths, sintir, and much more. Sky music by deep earth people...

Totality! It can only be good news. The second convergence of Natural Information Society and Bitchin Bajas, years removed from the first, misses no steps and posits low-key revolutions in gravity for everyone instead. LPs divide inevitably into two halves; here, the first side could be typed ‘space’ and the second side ‘time’. With loads of totally principled playing in the communal feel, both sides blur the edges warmly. Double Bass, Guimbri - Joshua Abrams Harmonium - Lisa Alvarado Drums, Percussion - Mikel Patrick Avery Organ, Synth - Cooper Crain Flute, Synth - Rob Frye Bass Clarinet - Jason Stein Electronics - Daniel Quinlivan

Ambarchi, Berthling and Werliin share a fascination with rhythm and the myriad of ways it can subdivide within the beat. Using aspects of jazz, world and experimental musics, each tune settles into a deep groove, digging itself via continuous minimal adjustments into an ever-deeper, eternal groove.

An utterly unique guitar/bass/drums triad: the guitar sounds like anything but a guitar; bass and drums simultaneously insistent and relaxed. Telephathic group-think opens a window to fresh fields of fusion: funk-jazz heads, polyrhythmic skeletons, ambient pastorals, post-kraut drones and shimmering soundtrack reveries. A music of sustained tension and deep atmosphere, marked by subtle, shifting dynamics playing out in an open sound field.

At long last, Rafael Toral delivers 'Travelling Light', his stunning, wildly anticated follow-up to 2024's critally acclaimed ‘Spectral Evolution’, via Drag City. Sprawling across beautifullay produced double LP and CD editions — complete with liner notes by Oto’s own Bradford Bailey — encountering the Portuguese, experimental journeyman embarking into the some of the most ambitious territory of his career, 'Travelling Light' is one of those rare wonders that unfolds over time and has to be heard to believed.

Ambarchi, Berthling and Werliin are back, a little looser and wilder than before. Their ability to lock in and focus on the smallest of details is enhanced here by a sense of increased immediacy. Great news for fans of stimulating variations of tone and mood within a potentially infinite universe of rhythm and sound! The more you listen to Ghosted III, the better your hearing becomes. Or maybe it’s just that you hear more every time you play it.

Glenn Kotche, Jim O'Rourke and Jeff Tweedy. Together again, this time with protection. Three guys playing musical songs featuring singing.

Extended guitar hero Oren Ambarchi returns with Shebang, the latest in the series of intricately detailed long-form rhythmic workouts that includes Quixotism (2014) and Hubris (2016). Like those records, Shebang features an international all-star cast of musical luminaries, their contributions recorded individually in locations from Sweden to Japan yet threaded together so convincingly (by Ambarchi in collaboration with Konrad Sprenger) that it’s hard to believe they weren’t breathing the same studio air. Expanding on the techniques used on Simian Angel (2019), we can never be entirely sure who is responsible for what we hear, as Ambarchi’s guitar is used to trigger everything from bass lines to driving piano riffs. Picking up from the staccato guitar patterns that ran through Hubris, Shebang’s single 35-minute track begins with a precisely interwoven lattice of chiming guitar figures, expanding Hubris’ monolithic pulse into a joyous, hyper-rhythmic melodicism that calls up points of reference as disparate as Albert Marcoeur, early Pat Metheny Group, and Henry Kaiser’s It’s A Wonderful Life. Building from isolated single notes into densely layered polyrhythms, the muted guitar tones are joined by subtle touches of shimmering Leslie cabinet tones and guitar synth. Simmering down and funnelling into a single note, the guitar stew is soon thickened by Joe Talia’s propulsive ride cymbal, which blossoms into a beautifully flowing yet rigorously snapped-to fusion funk, whose ever-shifting details skitter across the kit – think 70s heavyweights like Jack DeJohnette or Jon Christensen. An unexpected entry of guttural bass clarinet licks from Sam Dunscombe begins the series of instrumental features that pepper the remainder of the piece. Soon we hear from the legendary British pedal steel player B.J. Cole (hopefully known to some listeners from his outer-limits singer-songwriter masterpiece The New Hovering Dog or, failing that, ‘Tiny Dancer’), whose languorous yet uneasy lines float in and out of a shifting rhythmic foundation supported by a single note bass groove, cut through with aleatoric synth articulations Though single-mindedly occupying its rhythmic space throughout, Shebang’s dense ensemble sound is carefully composed while drawing on the free flow of improvisation, with individual voices momentarily coming to the fore and subtle changes in harmony and texture. Perhaps the most surprising of these shifts occurs around half-way through when the smoke of a buzzing synth crescendo from Jim O'Rourke clears to reveal something like a piano trio, with Ambarchi’s guitar-triggered piano patterns providing restless accompaniment to flowing melodic lines from Chris Abrahams of The Necks, while Johan Berthling’s double bass and Talia’s drums fill out the bottom end. Before long, things take another left turn as Julia Reidy’s rapidly picked 12-string guitar lines take centre stage, with O’Rourke’s monumental synth clouds hovering in the distance. The ensemble surges through a slow series of harmonic changes before the whole shebang dissolves into a delirious synthetic mirage. Bridging minimalism, contemporary electronics, and classic ECM stylings, and bringing together a cast of preternaturally talented contributors, Shebang is unmistakably the work of Oren Ambarchi: obsessively detailed, relentlessly rhythmic, unabashedly celebratory.

Four songs breeze past in nothing flat. O'Rourke gets jiffy wit it.

Variations On A Theme by OM" type="application/x-shockwave-flash">Variations On A Theme by OM" />Brand new, beautifully produced Vinyl and Cassetted reissues from Drag City  OM reunites one of the most powerful rhythm sections in rock music: Al Cisneros [bass, vocals] and Chris Hakius [drums], both ex-members of the legendary Sleep. Variations on a Theme is comprised of three long songs employing a series of rhythmic chants whose cadence-like textural drive conveys flight. The album's numerous lyrics serve as symbolist vehicles to a state outside the field of time and space. Variations on a Theme is a series of vibrations and flow. The opening track,"On The Mountain at Daw" is the thematic blueprint of the entire album; a transportive series of differentiated verse with sets of solid groove. "Kapil's Them" furthers the motif while the closer "Annapurna" breaks the spell, where the final wash of sound reflects the infinite.

Brand new, beautifully produced vinyl and cassettes editions from Drag City of Om astounding second full-length

Nearly twenty-five years after disbanding, Gastr del Sol have unpacked their archive, stringing together an alternative view to their genre-melting 1993-1998 run. This assembly of previously uncollected studio recordings and beautifully captured unreleased live performances forms a spacious ode to the flux that was their métier; a further set of reinventions that continue to alter the manner in which we hear music, and literally everything else! Mastered by Jim O'Rourke All instruments by David Grubbs and Jim O'Rourke with: Jeb Bishop (trombone, 11) Bundy K. Brown (bass, 4; guitar, 9) Steve Butters (percussion, 11) Gene Coleman (bass clarinet, 11) Thymme Jones (trumpet, 11) Terri Kapsalis (violin, 11) John McEntire (drums, 4, 9; synth, 11) Günter Müller (percussion, 5) Bob Weston (trumpet, 11) Sue Wolf (violin, 11)