My favorite recent work of appropriation-based art has to be a 12″ released on April Fool’s Day of this year, where Oren Ambarchi loops a few bars of ZZ Top, and then just rips a six-minute solo in a crazed, splenetic style he terms “stacte” on top of the thing. It’s so ridiculous, and very fun.
The dictionary tells me that stacte is “a sweet spice used by the ancient Jews in preparing incense,” so maybe that’s a stoner thing, or a spiritual one, or both.
One thing I love about this very lovable release is that no one wanted to be a narc when it first came out, so the description from the label in fact reads “Ambarchi is backed up by a badass rhythm section from Texas, and together they ride the endless riff into the goddamn sunset.”
This article appears in Dec 17-23, 2014.
