AMM
AMM music is supposed to admit all sounds but the members of AMM have marked preferences. An open-ness to the totality of sounds implies a tendency away from traditional musical structures towards informality. Governing this tendency -reining it in- are various thoroughly traditional musical structures such as saxophone, piano, violin, guitar, etc., in each of which reposes a portion of the history of music. Further echoes of the history of music enter through the medium of the transistor radio (the use of which as a musical instrument was pioneered by John Cage)” Cornelius Cardew, Towards an Ethics of Improvisation
AMM music is supposed to admit all sounds but the members of AMM have marked preferences. An open-ness to the totality of sounds implies a tendency away from traditional musical structures towards informality. Governing this tendency -reining it in- are various thoroughly traditional musical structures such as saxophone, piano, violin, guitar, etc., in each of which reposes a portion of the history of music. Further echoes of the history of music enter through the medium of the transistor radio (the use of which as a musical instrument was pioneered by John Cage)” Cornelius Cardew, Towards an Ethics of Improvisation
Member of: Eddie Prévost
The room
"This was one of the first occasions on which I worked with Keith Rowe, who bore more or less the same relation to the electric guitar as David Tudor did to the piano (I put that in the past tense because by no stretch of the imagination could you now call them guitarist or pianist respectively)."-Cornelius Cardew, 1966 More than forty years later, Keith Rowe is still adding to his remarkable legacy of sound and color. This latest release, The Room, marks the third full-length solo recording of …
Discrete Moments
Matchless Recordings presents a live concert by Eddie Prévost and John Tilbury recorded at Gateway Studios, Kingston-upon-Thames, England on the 6th of January, 2004. The album includes eight tracks performed by John Tilbury - piano, prepared piano and organ and Eddie Prévost - stringled barrel, tam-tam, percussion.
"Some of their music is delicate and pointillistic with wide spaces between sounds, but there are also rich, thick webs and, as indicated, Cage/Kleeube Goldberg thunkity-thunk machin…
Two Chapters and an Epilogue
Matchless Recordings presents a live concert by Evan Parker and John Tilbury recorded at Gateway Studios, Kingston-upon-Thames, England on Monday 3rd August 1998. The album includes three tracks performed by Evan Parker - tenor & soprano saxophones and John Tilbury - piano.
"These musicians have chosen to eschew the given media of jazz, from whence Evan Parker received much of his initial inspiration, and the classical world from which John Tilbury received his early and formative training, in o…
Barcelone piano solo
Barcelona - a piano solo piece: 36:49:00 - Recorded during Improvisa 2003 Festival in Barcelona (Spain) the 3th of December at L'ESPAI de Musica i Dansa de la Generalitat de Catalunya. Recorded and mastered by Ferran Conangla.
Plays Samuel Beckett
With Christina Jones and Sebastian Lexer. Features the following pieces: Cascando (a radio piece for music and voice). Voices by John Tilbury. Music composed and performed by John Tilbury with electronic modulations by Sebastian Lexer. Rough for Radio 1 (for music and voices). Voices: Christina Jones and John Tilbury. Music composed and performed by Sebastian Lexer, Eddie Prévost and John Tilbury. Studio recordings from 2004-5.
Imponderable evidence
Matchless Recordings presents a live concert by Eddie Prévost and Evan Parker recorded at Gateway Studios, Kingston-upon-Thames, London, on November 10th, 2003. The album includes five tracks performed by Evan Parker - tenor saxophone and Eddie Prévost - drums.
Touch
Matchless Recordings presents a live concert by the Eddie Prévost Trio recorded at Gateway Studio, Kingston, England on 9th March 1997. The album includes seven tracks performed by Eddie Prévost - Drums, Tom Chant - Soprano saxophone, and John Edwards - Double bass.
"This trio, quite intuitively (because I never spelt out what I hoped would happen) works in a subtle, attentive way: examining what the music is and where it is going all within the process of playing; feeling the sound to be comple…
Continuum +
Matchless Recordings presents a live concert by Eddie Prévost quartet. This album is composed of two parts. Part 1 was recorded at the Bracknell Jazz Festival on the 3rd of July, 1983. Part 2 was recorded at Porcupine Studios London. The album includes five tracks performed by Larry Stabbins - Tenor and Soprano Saxophones, Veryan Weston - Piano, Marcio Mattos - Double Bass, and Eddie Prévost - Drums.
"The music you hear on this DL has a distinct urgency and excitement. It moves forward in a comp…
So Are We, So Are We
Matchless Recordings presents a live concert by Eddie Prévost and Alan Wilkinson recorded at Barefoot Studios, London, England on 10th January 2006. The album includes five tracks performed by Eddie Prévost - Percussion, Alan Wilkinson - alto & baritone saxophones.
His work in AMM has labeled him a percussionist, and rightly so, but listen to “Supa, Supa;” with its shuffling high-hat and dancing brushes – this is idiomatically aware jazz drumming of a very high order. Some of the best music occu…
Concert, V
Eddie Prévost & Veryan Weston. Recorded in England, 5/98, mixed by Evan Parker. "'Beauty as an Ear Thing' is a meticulous exploration of texture, full of soft explosions, the reverberant ring of spinning metals, and overtones that glow like embers, dying into silence; this music wouldn't be misplaced on an AMM disc. 'Clustered' rebuilds something out of the emptiness. The dislocated rhythmic feel is like an abstraction of something Monk and Max Roach might have played together. 'Fingers and drum…
Material Consequences
Matchless Recordings presents a live concert by Eddie Prévost recorded at Gateway Studio, Kingston, England on 16th of July, 2001. The album includes four tracks performed by Eddie Prévost - Percussion.
"Alone in the studio, it is just me trying to breathe life into the materials I have chosen at hand. I am looking, hoping, that something unexpected will crop up. The gongs, chimes, bells, skins, strings and resonating boxes are a rich environment. You never know for sure what you will dig up. I …
Loci of Change
Matchless Recordings presents a live concert by Eddie Prévost recorded at Gateway Studio, Kingston, England on September 10th, 1996. The album includes six tracks performed by Eddie Prévost - Percussion.
"After a life-long study of percussion, Eddie Prévost has discovered ways of making the instruments reveal hidden aspects of thei voices. These, his first solo recordings, comprise and anthology of this long study but at the same time there is a freshness here that suggests the research is far f…
Minute Particulars
In 177 pages Eddie Prévost includes twenty-nine thought-provoking essays on ideas, perceptions, reactions and the practices of improvised music, as well as a short index. Reactions to the real world - in particular, the political, corporate and commercial ones - are never far from the surface and the place of the individual is mirrored through that of the musician developing his or her own position, responsiveness and voice in a group context. Discourses include the questioning of terminology su…
Piano Music 1959-70
‘Piano Music 1959-70’ is a reissue of an album that enjoys cult status
among Cardew aficionados. The standout piece remains Volo solo (1965),
conceived originally for Tilbury as an attempt to coin a new type of
virtuosity. Cornelius Cardew expected it to be taken at a reckless tempo so that,
as he wrote, ‘the piano should seem to be breaking apart’. But the
material he gives the pianist – 60 inchoate fragments interlinked by
pauses – trips impetus up, the structure left with a hiccuping
s…
Chamber Music 1955-64
Restocked, reduced price. The works on this CD represent arguably the most experimental and radical works to come out of Britain in the past 40 years. Cornelius Cardew's scores from the early 1960's are notable for their elegant, original and precise notational scores, labyrinthine blueprints for realisation as totally new and original compositions. They are open to ever new interpretations whose possibilities are restricted only by the creativity of the performer. It is this responsibility laid…
Cornelius Cardew. A reader
A very nice book brings together a diverse collection of Cornelius Cardew's major essays and writings from different stages of his career, together with commentaries by other writers associated with his work. It reflects developments, changes and contradictions in his thinking about music from the late 1950s to the end of his life. As a companion volume to John Tilbury's biography 'Cornelius Cardew a life unfinished', Copula, 2006 (ISBN 0 9525492 3 9) it provides essential material for the study…
Apogee
Restocked, reduced price. 2CD Edition. In 1968 Mainstream released an LP with AMM on one side and MEV (Musica Electronica Viva, then based in Italy) on the other. In 2004 the two groups re-convened in London. Two of the five original AMM (Eddie Prevost and Keith Rowe), and three of the original five MEV (Alvin Curran, Frederick Rzewski and Richard Teitelbaum) still in place. The only new boy on this CD is their contemporary John Tilbury; since 1980 he has been the stable third AMMusician. On CD …
Live in Allentown USA (1994)
More than any other group creating spontaneously improvised music, the members of AMM have a calm certainty about them, a serene sense of unhurriedness. There appears to be no doubt that whatever musical element is brought to light during their performance, it will prove capable of both generating beauty on its own and assuming its place as a structural element with what has preceded it. This live recording is in many ways typical of the group in its most common configuration of the '80s and '90…
Newfoundland (1992)
Restocked, reduced price. "Since its inception in 1966, the cooperative group AMM has been uncompromising in its commitment to freely improvised music. Often, especially early in its existence, this resulted in a harsh, aggressive sound field, one that even the most inquisitive newcomer might have difficulty approaching. By the mid-'80s, perhaps due to the mellowing that comes with age or the addition of pianist John Tilbury, AMM's music took a turn toward the quieter, more contemplative music e…
The Nameless Uncarved Block
In Ed Baxter's liner notes to this recording, he writes, "AMM exists where words fail". Indeed, AMM's steadfast avoidance of music which has any references apart from itself makes descriptive commentary a daunting task. In The Nameless Uncarved Block, however, recorded at live performances during the 1990 Taktlos Festival, the group comes as close as they've ever sounded to something resembling a free jazz unit. Partly, this is due to the inclusion of founding member Lou Gare on tenor sax. His p…