Oren Ambarchi / Johan Berthling / Andreas Werliin Ghosted

Ambarchi, Berthling and Werliin share a fascination with rhythm and the myriad of ways it can subdivide within the beat. Using aspects of jazz, world and experimental musics, each tune settles into a deep groove, digging itself via continuous minimal adjustments into an ever-deeper, eternal groove.The music of Ghosted exists in the intention of a shared moment of playing, a clearly delineated time, put forth with a steady flow of small details on bass, guitar and drums, in a remarkable display of rhythmic flexibility within a minimal framework.Rooting in the rich tonality and repeating figures of Johan's acoustic (and sometimes electric) bass, the four tracks that make up Ghosted act as variations on a theme, unspooling continuously over the course of 39 minutes with the terse flow of krautrock jams - closely observed percussive riffs and repetitions that build continuously with subtle shifts as they move forward, with the small details flying expansively in and out across the stereo spectrum. Oren's guitar often sounds with an organ-like tone, with notes of fire and glass wafting out over the percolation and permutation in Johan and Andreas' rhythms. These men have been playing long enough to, without any real words, shape their improvisations with short and long term goals. Performances that day ranged from almost five minutes to almost sixteen. With an eye toward further expansion, they'd invited the legendary Swedish reed player Christer Bothén, whose knowledge of the guimbri and donso n'goni was incisively shared with the great Don Cherry some fifty years ago. Christer plays donso n'goni on the first track, and his parts sync like cogs in a watch, revolving in fluid coordination with Oren, Johan and Andreas.Mixed and mastered by Joe Talia at Good Mixture, Berlin, Ghosted highlights the intimate dialogue between players, as well as the careful curation of space between them. It is rare to think of silence in relation to music where everyone is constantly playing.