Pale Calling by Oren Ambarchi, Kassel Jaeger, James Rushford

Pale Calling presents the fruits of the first collaboration between Oren Ambarchi, Kassel Jaeger and James Rushford, recorded at GRM studios, Paris in 2014. Although drawing on aspects of each member’s solo works, the trio mark out their own unique territory, a mysterious space of slowly cycling electronics, distracted vocal mumbles and often unidentifiable field recordings. These two side-long pieces are composed of distinct layers that gently rise up and recede, obeying a dream-logic that feels entirely disconnected from traditional electro-acoustic composition, forming surreal sonic images in which half-remembered fragments of everyday life mix with the quiet intensity of dreams haunted by natural forces. Over the course of the first side a slowly thudding electronic pulse eventually gives way to a distant organ, detouring through reverberated guitar shimmers, moments of Ashley-esque vocal automatism and waves of insects and bats. The second side utilises similar ingredients, this time layered over the top of what sounds like radically slowed down film music. As the field recorded and electronic spray slowly builds, the listener is left with the impression of hearing the last moments of a dying television abandoned in a field overrun with animals and insects.

Oren Ambarchi is a composer and multi-instrumentalist with longstanding interests in transcending conventional instrumental approaches. His work focuses mainly on the exploration of the guitar, "re-routing the instrument into a zone of alien abstraction where it’s no longer easily identifiable as itself. Instead, it’s a laboratory for extended sonic investigation". (The Wire, UK).

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