Renegade axe-men keep raising the bar for one another, making it more difficult to push the envelope of six-strings-and-an-amp possibilities. Christian Fennesz and Kevin Drumm may dominate the current heat of guitar innovation, but these popular contenders would be wise to look out for Oren Ambarchi. The Sydney-based musician, late of such diverse projects as the JP-noise-flavored Phlegm and Ambarchi/Avenaim's The Alte Rebbe's Niggun (Tzadik), is coming up from the outside with some impressive new tricks up his sleeve. Ambarchi has been self-releasing solo guitar recordings for a while, but Insulation is his first missive to the mass market. Like his peers, Ambarchi seems intent on making his improvised performances sound like anything but solo-guitar performances. He skillfully transcends the instrument's conventional range, turning Insulation into a parade of guitar-sonic impossibilities - watery gurgle, wildly zigzagging piezoelectric effects ("Lungs"), percussive tattoos ("Murmur") (c) euphonic feedback fabrications, and harmonic afterimages. "Simon" and "Preamble" stretch the guitar's palette to include expressive reed-chirps, chimes, tongue-flicked brass emulation, and mewling ghost notes. Waves of derived sound wash in rough ripples over the shallow rhythmic bed of the 14+-minute "Snork" one of several collaborations with Adelaide's Matthew Thomas.
Considering Ambarchi's source, rhythm is a mystifying constant on Insulation. "Concurrents", "Lungs", and "Murmur" incorporate insistent, insinuating pulse rhythms - some quite disruptive - that imply extensive computer trickery. The pseudo-breakbeat maneuvers of Ambarchi and Thomas' "Strategem" and the looped glitch entanglements of their "La Notte" seem similarly dependent upon sequencing. "L'eclisse", dedicated to Ambarchi's father, recalls the fascinating suspended-in-air harmonic composition of Polwechsel guitarist Burkhard Stangl (see his dazzling R