Shebang cover

Shebang

Released

Oren Ambarchi is our poet of evenness. The bible of this was and is Hubris (2016), a massive work that, like another composition of his, Knots, has various iterations. On Shebang, Ambarchi begins with guitar but conceives like a drummer, which he is. He is joined by a dozen or so players, building out from hammered guitar figures that reproduce the dynamic flatline of an electric fan hitting a pencil. Ambarchi introduces variation by adding instruments and shifting tonality while keeping a fixed level of attack for each instrument. It’s a play on minimalism, with more chaos in the arrangement than you’d get from Reich and more machine-like drive than you hear in an Eastman score.

Sasha Frere-Jones

Recommended by

Suggestions
Heal cover

Heal

Lucas Dupuy, Pavel Milyakov
Pulse Music cover

Pulse Music

John McGuire
Aviary cover

Aviary

Julia Holter
Palm cover

Palm

Kukangendai
Vergers cover

Vergers

Sarah Davachi
New Neighborhoods cover

New Neighborhoods

Various Artists
Comet Meta cover

Comet Meta

David Grubbs, Taku Unami