There are certain labels that are so synonymous with taste and quality that you can buy any LP from its catalogue, safe in the knowledge that it will be a record that you will not fail to love and cherish. Ideologic Organ, founded by Stephen O’Malley and the late, great Peter Rehberg (also the founder of Editions Mego), is one such label, and Chris Abrahams, Oren Ambarchi and Robbie Avenhaim’s debut, Placelessness, is one such record. To the uninitiated, Abrahams is a pianist and member of the incredible Australian avant-jazzers The Necks; his fellow countryman Ambarchi is a phenomenal guitarist specialising in the heavier side of free improvisation, who has collaborated with the likes of O’Malley’s Sunn O))), Jim O’Rourke, and the legendary Alvin Lucier; and Avenaim (also Australian) is a renowned percussion virtuoso.
Comprising two long-form works that sit at the nexus of ambient music, rigorous experimentalism and improvisation, and machine music, Placelessness could reasonably be described as a maximalist take on minimalism. Shimmering lines of repeating piano arpeggios ebb and flow, Avenaim’s machine gun-fire percussion somehow morphs into crystalline drones, and Ambarchi’s guitar masterfully delivers multifarious tonalities and textures. Despite being the first album by the trio, the three men have nearly 20 years of working together on the dial, and the mutual understanding this engenders makes for some of the most extraordinary real-time compositions that have been released in the last decade. Phenomenal. (Released: 27/10/23)
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