!Pivotal Avant Garde Text Klaxon! First widely available vinyl reissue of one of the key moments in early UK improv, strangely first released on Elektra, though not entirely sure there was a clear place for this in '67 given its radical tear-up-the-rulebook nature. ReR Megacorp put it out on CD a few decades later, which probably provides a little more guidance as to where AMM fit in. Two tracks, 40 minutes, five different players (including Cornelius Cardew) going wild and abrasive on sax, clarinet, guitar and various electronics and percussion, this is quite the ride, doing what all good improv does by allowing you to arrive at a place without ever really knowing the journey in spite of multiple listens. Stockhausen and Cage loom large and the vocal samples remind me a little of Reich on City Life, but ultimately they are writing their own language here, one we're still trying to bend our heads round now. Must have been quite the experience to have been in the room when these fellas were feeling this one out. When's Oto opening again?
__The first vinyl reissue of the classic debut album from Amm, Ammmusic. Coinciding with the 50th anniversary of its recording in 1966, this reissue makes one of the cornerstones of the experimental music tradition available again in its original form, replete with Keith Rowe’s beautiful pop art cover and the terse aphorisms by the group that served as its original liner notes. Remastered and cut by Rashad Becker at D&M Berlin and presented in an exact replica sleeve of the original 1966 release by Stephen O'Malley.
A testament to the interaction between the experimental avant-garde and the countercultural underground, the album was originally released on Elektra, recorded by Jac Holzman (the label’s founder, responsible for signing The Doors, Love, and The Stooges) and produced by DNA, a group that included Pink Floyd's first manager Peter Jenner. (Pink Floyd paid tribute to AMM’s influence on their improvisational sensibility with the track Flaming on their debut album, named after the piece that occupies Ammmusic’s first side, Later During a Flaming Riviera Sunset).
Formed in 1965 by three players from the emerging British jazz avant-garde – Keith Rowe and Lou Gare had played with the great progressive big band leader Mike Westbrook and Eddie Prévost played in a post-bop group with Gare – Amm quickly evolved from a free jazz group into something decidedly more difficult to categorise. By the time these recordings were made, two more members had joined the group: another Westbrook associate, Lawrence Sheaf, and the radical composer Cornelius Cardew. Then at work on his masterpiece of graphic notation Treatise, Cardew brought with him extensive experience of the post-serialist and Cageian currents in contemporary composition. Using a combination of conventional instruments and unconventional methods of sound production (most famously Keith Rowe’s prepared tabletop guitar, but also prepared piano and transistor radio), the group performed improvised pieces often running for over two hours and ranging from extended periods of silence to terrifying cacophonies. - Black Truffle
