Originally released in 2000 as an LP on Plate Lunch, Stacte.3 was guitarist/manipulatist Ambarchi's follow-up volume to some of his earliest recordings, and would pave the way for his subsequent m.o., the art of which has been to essentially render moot any understood syntax for the guitar (and, to an adjunct, if comparable degree, the laptop). Now given a remake over into the realm of digital media thanks to this CD reissue, one can revel in Ambarchi's embryonic phase. Experiencing recordings fomented during these prescient years finds him an artful dodger of all things "correct" and "feasible" — already, the guitar is more or less warped beyond all recognition, subjugated by then new-fangled reams of pliable software.
Would it surprise even hardened Ambarchi followers that this early material informs some of his best, most satisfying and infinitely digestible, work? Ambarchi's long bred pedigree is well steeped in the art of surprise, from playing with a bevy of improvisers across the globe to his own often startling solo performances. Whether in the company of others or not, he's moved effortlessly between pixilated laptop dynamics and coarse soundscapes to an exacting form of nu-folk frippery and cinderblock-dense noise wallops with a surfeit of form, function and ease. Stact.3, now over nine-years-old (a virtual millennia in genre years), sounds full of so much joyous invention and compositional verve it could have made the rounds yesterday, let alone a decade ago. It demonstrates that Ambarchi's theories were every bit realized when executed in practice, that he embraced nascent technology with customary brio and no small amount of wit, and that the guitar, despite its storied/clichéd/over-bearing history, still had tall tales to tell.
Two lengthy tracks feature here, each as distinct from the other today as when they made their debut on wax. The awry faux-xylophone twinklings that usher in "3A" are ostensibly Ambarchi coaxing then processing his aberrant strings, an unearthly permutation of textures that plays with a near-Reichian flavor. This is followed by a buzzing about of odd blips, pulses and flashes of synthetic light that dance about the xylophones like fireflies; whether they come from soft synths or arise out of Ambarchi's string (de)constructions is unknown — origins aside, their brittle, naive melodies could just as easily turn up on a recent Raster-Noton release. Ambarchi is happy to let these sounds tumble ass-over-teakettle until they suddenly vanish at little over eight minutes in: for the remaining six, Ambarchi foments a shuddering sine wave that plays out over what might be a subtly malfunctioning hard-drive pop, where the notion of this piece again sounding like a Raster-ized blaze of (micro) glory (albeit with a dash of Phill Niblock) is perfectly emphasized.
However, "3B" jettisons those digital ambiguities completely. Ambarchi rediscovers his "roots", hoisting up his freak flag to at least half mast: his strings are now suffused with sturm und klang, his bowing, scraping, and processing of a cymbal in tandem resulting in a barely restrained cacophony of heavy metals. It's to the artist's credit that he doesn't allow these arresting sounds to degenerate into amorphous noise; nevertheless, "3B" comes across literally as its brother's evil twin. Then suddenly, quite unexpectedly, Ambarchi does the 'ol switcheroo and we're back in the never-never land of bleep-bloop, his computer now bitmapping a morning Martian sky replete with Louis and Bebe Barron-like tonalities and end-groove rust throughout the remaining 12-odd minutes. An essential work thus concludes, for both Ambarchi fanatics and the uninitiated, and what was once an obscure piece of protean electronica has been thankfully (re)birthed for posterity.
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