Admittedly: It is very tempting to talk to the Australian Oren Ambarchi about food. Even a quick glance at his extensive, long discography proves that someone has a great deal of interest and probably also the necessary expertise. Accordingly, tracks and records are called “Honey Pie”, “Grapes From The Estate” or “Afternoon Tea”; if you search further, you’ll even come across “Pad Phet Gob” on a record that Ambarchi recorded with crys cole. The Thai name refers to a frog curry dish.
And then the label of the musician, formerly known as a drummer and now more as a guitarist, is also called Black Truffle Records. Those black truffles, the most expensive and finest specimens of which are tracked down by specially trained pigs (and increasingly often by dogs) in the French Périgord and Dordogne, find their counterpart in the label’s discography in special finds from the history of experimental and avant-garde music. Ambarchi is constantly on the lookout – but this has nothing to do with the trained “craft” of the pigs: “As a label maker, I act primarily out of intuition,” he explains in the interview we conducted in connection with his appearances at this year’s Monheim Triennale. “I’m a music addict and a fanatic.” But where can you find the sometimes offbeat tracks and albums that appear on Black Truffle?
Chico Mello / Helinho Brandão
A Song For Two Mothers / Occam Ix
The Mountains Pass
For Mccoy
The answer has two parts: On the one hand, there is the artist Oren Ambarchi himself, who took to the stage at the age of 17 and in some ways has not left it to this day. The son of Sephardic Jews, he joined John Zorn’s label Tzadik at an early age, belonged to the extended circle of the New York Knitting Factory and became part of the Radical Jewish Culture movement. This connection to one of the hottest hot spots of the avant scene of the 1990s led to a number of collaborations on the border between (free) jazz, improvisation, drone and electronic experiments.
This led to a career that took the Australian on extensive tours to Europe, the USA and Asia, especially Japan. However, his home base remained Australia until 2020 (“Where you can eat fantastic food simply because of the proximity to Asia.”) Back in 2009, Ambarchi wanted to re-release some albums that he had previously only released on CD – or that were no longer available. He founded Black Truffle for this purpose, but right from the start he also wanted to release records by his friends and acquaintances – or even long-forgotten gems of avant-garde history. That would be the second reason for founding the label.
Everything under a single roof
After 14 releases in which he himself was involved – including collaborations with Jim O’Rourke, Keiji Haino, Fennesz and Merzbow – the first “real discovery” followed with catalog number 15: an electro-acoustic improvisation by the Italian composer Giancarlo Toniutti.
Since then, over 100 more releases have seen the light of day, which has already secured the label legendary status; honored, for example, by a 3-day festival at London’s cult club Cafe Oto in 2019.
What he still can’t or won’t answer in the 16th year of existence is the question of genre and how he locates himself musically: “I find talking about it terribly boring,” he says, emphasizing that in many places – such as here in Monheim – this question is no longer even asked. “There are so many genres that I love. I take something from all these genres for my music.”
»Es gibt so viele Genres, die ich liebe. Aus all diesen Genres nehme ich etwas mit für meine Musik.«
Oren Ambarchi
So it’s no wonder that Black Truffle’s label sound is difficult to define or grasp; each record is a new exploration of the possibilities of modern music production, drawing on field recordings and live music, effects or raw instrumentation. Albums such as the retro-futuristic Buchla synthesizer work “Future Travel” by David Rosenboom stand alongside the delicate, ethereal jazz album “For McCoy” by Japan’s Eiko Ishibashi as a matter of course.
The only question is the future of the label: “I already have a number of releases planned for next year,” and referring to the festival five years ago, he notes that his big dream would be a Black Truffle festival with as many of the artists from the last 15 years as possible. Maybe it’s just a pipe dream, but Oren Ambarchi has the confidence to do it. It’s a gut feeling.
