Oren Ambarchi - Dragon's Return (2025) [Hi-Res]

Watching musicians improvise the score to a film in real time is like witnessing the destruction of the fifth wall. Music creates so much of a movie's emotional tone because of its ability to work on the subconscious while the mind focuses on image, plot, and dialogue. So when its unseen hand is made visible, it's an eye-opening experience that can either enhance the viewing or make the whole affair feel stilted and strange. It's hard to imagine ambient guitar gods Oren Ambarchi and Fredrik Rasten's live scoring of Eduard Grečner's Soviet-era cult classic Dragon's Return as anything less than transcendent. Luckily, the evidence (the audible evidence, at least) is on tape.

The start of Rasten and Ambarchi's Dragon's Return score is surprisingly light on guitar. Instead, there are bells, flutes, and hums, some apparently delivered by Ambarchi through sea shells. But when Rasten does begin to strum his 12-string guitar—first delicately, then emphatically—the rest of the music fades into the background, and it's as if a spell has lifted. Soon, though, every sound is going at once, colliding in epic waves of soft noise. It's easy to understand how the score's live performance aligned with the film's forlorn and folkloric atmosphere, setting the stage for the ill-fated protagonist—a potter believed by his fellow villagers to be the cause of natural disasters—to walk on without a friend in the world.

On Dragon's Return, as on many great ambient albums, it's hard to tell where one instrument ends and the next begins, when one phrase starts and another finishes. And yet, the piece moves with a sense of purpose, progressing with an internal logic that only Ambarchi and Rasten—and perhaps not even they—will ever know. Though it makes for great background music (and, likely, great film-watching music), this record is ideal for an isolated, lights-off deep listen. © Raphael Helfand

Tracklist:
1-1 Oren Ambarchi - Part I [22:39]
1-2 Oren Ambarchi - Part II [22:39]