AMM
1.' Tunes Without Measure or End' mrcd44
2. 'Fine' mrcd46
AMM and their CDs have an almost comfortable familiarity. The trio's personnel has remained fundamentally the same since the early '80s when pianist John Tilbury joined the remaining founders, drummer Eddie Prévost and guitarist Keith Rowe. Every two or three years they release a CD, usually a single uninterrupted improvisation, about an hour in length, taped in performance. The only way in which these two CDs tamper with that practice is that they were both released in 2001. 'Tunes Without Measure' 'was recorded at Glasgow's free radiCCAls festival in May 2000 ; 'Fine' a year later at France's Musique Action festival. It takes its name from the dancer Fine Kwiatkowski, a silent partner in the performance.
'Tunes Without Measure' is a slowly unfolding dreamscape in which the group attenuates both time and space. In this specific performance, Tilbury and Rowe represent very different sonic vocabularies. Tilbury delights in the acoustic resonance of a good piano, in the clearly articulated tone or cluster. His sounds hang in the air in a way that seems traditionally beautiful. Rowe's fundamental sounds are abrasive metallic ratchetings, humming feedback, treble-loaded pings and bowed guitar that might be attached to nerve ends. And always the presence of his transistor radio, ready to intrude momentarily the outside world in its worst light — "Sushi isn't just for fish!" is this day's clearest message. But together AMM create a sonic space so large here, so fundamentally clear, that there's room for the two approaches to co-exist, as if Rowe and Tilbury sometimes played at opposite ends of the universe. That expansive space is a genuinely collective creation, one that seems to draw on the audience's attention for some of its capacity. It's absurd to point out highlights in work at once as diverse and unified as this, but the combination of sonically distinct, sustained tones from the three musicians in "Tune Two" and Tilbury's lullaby-like playing in the closing "Tune Six" are especially beautiful.
While 'Fine's' opening percussion might suggest that the same ritual is about to be enacted, its first "segment" describes an utterly different world — mechanical, harsh, a world that Tilbury's piano enters warily at first before his metallic string-sweeps arise to complement the maze of feedback electronics and percussion. This world of difference between the two pieces demonstrates how far the AMM improvisation is from conventional ceremony. If it is, in a sense, a ritual of reintegration — of self, community, the senses — then it appears to work only the same way once. That is, it is a process that demands originality, a unique responsiveness to the day's possibilities. It's testimony to AMM's creativity that not only do these performances sound (and ultimately feel) utterly unalike, but either performance sounds different with each new hearing.
Stuart Broomer
Coda July/August 2002
The album's title connotation is at least dual. This is a recording of a live performance done in conjunction with dancer Fine Kwiatkowski (who, incidentally, is not audible), and it's certainly "fine" in the qualitative sense. One hopes the aura of "finality" implicit in the title doesn't apply. This is one of AMM's quietest, most somber recordings, not as relatively sumptuous as Newfoundland but having a slightly harsher edge, even in its low volume. Eddie Prévost sticks almost entirely to rubbed or stroked surfaces, rarely if ever producing anything sounding like a struck percussion instrument or drum. He and Keith Rowe establish numerous and complex drones, a weaving together of sonic material aggressive and unnerving for all its reticence. AMM's music has been described as being "as like and unalike as trees," and indeed their ability, after more than 35 years as a functioning unit, to avoid routines and ruts while retaining an unmistakable "AMM-ness" is astonishing. Pianist John Tilbury, known for his penchant for Feldman-esque contributions, even manages to largely sidestep those, staying inside the piano or offering melodic fragments that almost invoke Debussy. When, in the last several minutes of the performance, the volume swells into a hall-filling hum and then subsides, it's almost as though the trio has taken a deep breath of satisfaction at both a job well done and at having found still virgin territory to explore. At a time when the electro-acoustic improvisatory scene was bursting at the seams with all manner of exciting musicians and avenues of discovery, the grizzled veterans of AMM were still able to carve out a unique and deeply beautiful space. Fine is yet another significant and stunning document of this ageless, wonderful group's journey.
Brian Olewnick,
All Music Guide