In the world of free improvisation and experimental music, ad hoc ensembles named just for their members are more often than not ephemeral, one-off formations. Australian guitarist Oren Ambarchi has participated in a fair share of such outfits, collaborating with everyone from electronic musician Ricardo Villalobos to noisenik Keiji Hano. His 2022 meeting with the Swedish duo of drummer Andreas Werliin and bassist Johan Berthling appeared likely to face the same fate of showing us a great time and then ghosting us for good. Yet, it seems the trio had discovered a particular joy in making music together, consequently releasing an unexpected sophomore album in 2024, and now reconvening for a third time in four years.
Like its predecessors, Ghosted III is a rolling affair, all circular grooves and spectral riffs, with Werliin and Berthling’s pulsing sway providing the motor that anchors, animates, and pulls along the broad palette of effervescent sounds that Ambarchi extracts from his guitar. The opening piece, ‘Yek’, is a case in point. Its lovely progressions invite the soft, barely-there patter of percussion and undulating bass lines to expand into a billowing bubble, while guitar licks grow and glow like jellyfish rising to the surface, then contract into sparse, pointillist shapes. Owing to its subtle use of texture and volume gradations, the cut exudes a gorgeous sense of stretching time and space, eventually becoming a conduit for atmospheres of wide horizons and vast landscapes located somewhere around the territories of New York’s ambient Americana trio SUSS.
Those who primarily perceive Ambarchi as a strict experimentalist in love with forbidding sounds might find the melodic, almost ethereal lattice of guitar effects on Ghosted III perplexing. Yet, the mercurial guitarist has spoken at length about his passion for pop and rock, traces of which can be found in the crevices of his solo work but that are made even more explicit here. ‘Do’ is suffused with these dreamy, dulcet sensibilities despite its otherwise abstract nature – faint rhythms sustained by brisk, quasi-microtonal cymbal strikes, windswept textures, and whistling chords all disappearing into an oily black background.
Berthling and Werliin are not only mainstays of the Scandinavian jazz scene, which has brought them together on numerous occasions, but also permanent members of Fire! with Mats Gustafsson. The pair know each other well, to say the least, and their interactions are often so effortless that they appear like a sort of magic. On ‘Chahar’, this telepathic connection manifests a compact yet loose jazz swing. It evolves patiently, with shakers and rim hits slowly syncopating in unison and delicate snare bumps gradually drifting apart from walking bass plucks. The displayed sense of careful gradation and instrumental discipline brings The Necks to mind. However, the trio’s music here is still that much more dynamic and to the point, especially as Ambarchi’s ghostly riffs start waving through the groove’s valleys and mountains, evoking the intricate loops of his solo albums.
The album closes with two of its longest tracks. ‘Panj’ reverberates and ripples along rumbling low frequencies, while ‘Shesh’ locks into a booming post-rock crescendo that, quite intentionally, never resolves itself. More than ever before, Ambarchi, Berthling, and Werliin feel relaxed and nimble here, like a band that’s ready to start exploring even farther away from the style set during that initial encounter in 2022.
