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All ideas streamlined into a single flow of creativity. Smiltė.

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Graham Holliday

drawn to… Palm Sugar Candy – Oren Ambarchi

I first heard of Oren Ambarchi last year, when I stumbled across the Patience Soup collaboration with Phew and Jim O’Rourke. Somewhat embarrassingly—given how good his music is—I’d never heard his solo work until last week. I dug around his discography and ended up listening to the 16-minute long Palm Sugar Candy track from the Simian Angel LP on repeat.

Simian Angel LP by Oren Ambarchi

Palm Sugar Candy is so good that I decided to use it as the starting point for the second in my “drawn to…” series. Drawn to… is a mini-project where I draw blind onto a 10cm x 10cm piece of white card while listening to a track or an LP, and I see where it goes from there.

Scan of the blind drawing made while listening to Palm Sugar Candy by Oren Ambarchi

First, I drew the black pen sketch above while listening to the track. Then, I scanned and enlarged it, and printed it onto A4. As I continued listening to the LP, I started to embellish the drawing on the A4 print.

three face | corner detail

As ever with this kind of experiment, the result is unpredictable, and that is the delight. I’m calling the finished drawing ‘three-face’. Thanks to Oren for the music, and, as I am discovering, Black Truffle records is a trove of gold.

three face | drawn to… Palm Sugar Candy by Oren Ambarchi

I’ve still got a little bit of work to do to finish the first in the drawn to… series—drawn to… Vertigo KO by Phew—but I’ll blog about that when I’m done. Meanwhile, find me on Instagram for more drawing.

Graham Holliday is an editor, writer and media trainer with twenty years experience working on editorial, educational and digital projects for the BBC and others.