Oren Ambarchi trio release album "Serpentine" with Christer Bothen

Oren Ambarchi, Johan Berthling and Andreas Werliin released Serpentine on August 18, an album that brings a fourth voice into the guitar, bass and drums trio behind three previous records under the name Ghosted. That fourth voice is Christer Bothen, a Swedish multi-instrumentalist whose main instrument is bass clarinet but who also plays donso n'goni, a six-stringed harp he studied in Mali in the 1970s, a period that eventually connected him to trumpeter Don Cherry. He also trained in Gnawa music, learning the guinbri in Marrakesh, and his 1984 solo album Trancedance, a mix of horn-driven rhythms, was reissued by Ambarchi's own label Black Truffle in 2024.

Reviewer Daryl Worthington, writing for The Quietus, called the record an album of "simmering, slow-paced intensity," and traced Bothen's connection to the group back to Ghosted's very first record, where he contributed donso n'goni to the opening track. Serpentine builds on that earlier link with a full-length collaboration, and according to the review, his presence pulls the trio's sound toward a wider, more global frame than their earlier work, reiterating how the group draws on traditions deeper rooted than contemporary experimental music usually does.

The album runs slower than the earlier three Ghosted records, the review noted, giving Berthling's basslines and Werliin's drumming room to build gradually rather than lock into a groove right away. The title track uses a swaying bassline from Berthling's upright bass as its foundation while Ambarchi's guitar adds organ-like tones, with Bothen entering around six minutes in on woozy bass clarinet.

On "Antigorite," the longest track on the record, Werliin holds a near-static tempo before pivoting into a faster pace partway through, a shift the review described as the moment the track turns from hypnotic to mesmerising. "Lizardite" has Bothen switch to donso n'goni, filling the space left by Berthling sitting the track out, while closer "Chrysotile" moves from a slow, dirge-like opening into a fuller groove built around Berthling's bass and increasingly textural drumming from Werliin.

The Ghosted project has produced a working chemistry between Ambarchi, Berthling and Werliin across three earlier albums, and Serpentine marks the first time the trio has built a full record around a guest as central to the sound as Bothen. The review closed by describing the album's effect as almost medicinal against an "overwhelming, slop saturated" cultural moment, though it gave no word on whether the pairing is a one-off or the start of a longer collaboration between the four musicians.

Serpentine lands on the release calendar as one of the more unusual indie releases of the week, a record that pulls a guitar-bass-drums trio further from rock convention with every new collaborator it takes on.