(Amidst) the Sounds of Indifference
Trying to recall events thirty years back is risky. But things are made easier if you have an audio record of a specific event. The recording that Lou Gare and I made as part of ICES festival at The Roundhouse in London on August 27, 1972 is
such an aide memoire. And, hearing it several times since the tapes were unearthed has given me a strange insight into the event that transcends my initial joy at hearing my old partner in such superb form again.
ICES 1972 was a festival of new music organised by Harvey Matusow. I can recall little of him personally, although we did meet occasionally. But he had a reputation that dogged him until, and perhaps after, his untimely death in January
2002. The nature of this reputation had better be left to those who have specific information. The only formal relationship I had with Harvey was to agree for Lou Gare and myself to perform at 'his' festival. That we did not get paid - like many
others involved - is perhaps the basis of his bruised reputation in the musical world (at least as far as the London scene was concerned). I had all but forgotten about him, the ICES festival and the recorded performance that Lou and I made, until Eric Lanzillotta contacted me about the restoration and digitalisation of the materials.
As I said, my initial response was one of affection and wonder at some of Lou's saxophone playing, (and some little satisfaction in my own contribution). Lou's work has always perhaps been out-of- synch with any prevailing fashion. And,
as Martin Davidson rightly noted in the text that accompanied our only CD released hitherto as a sax and drums duo, although there might be a superficial resemblance to jazz - and I suppose saxophone and drums must signal some kind of expectation - in fact our work was "decidedly non jazz." (To Hear and Back Again, Matchless Recordings MRCD03). And, to accentuate this difference, a later reviewer has noted that Lou perhaps owed more stylistically to Lester Young
than to the free jazz models of Albert Ayler, Ornette Coleman or late Coltrane. And an approach farther away from that of his contemporary in free music, Evan Parker, is difficult to imagine. Perhaps therein lies the stylistic conundrum that
took Gare out of the frame in the general perception of how free music should evolve.
However, as I listened more deeply to the recording. I became more and more conscious of the pauses and the off-stage noises, and also the lack of audience response. Many of the cues that improvising musicians respond to were not there. I began to recall the psychology of the event. The vast cavern of the then unmodified Round House - a huge Victorian brick domed building that had previously been a railway turning shed - was (at least for our concert) all but devoid of an audience. In the silences and pregnant pauses that were a characteristic of our performances you can hear doors swinging open and closed, a child's voice echoes in the distance, and there are other indistinguishable human
murmurings and nameless isolated clonks. In one
memorable moment footsteps intrude, walking across the stone flagged floor, made memorable by the way Lou incorporates the rhythm of the footsteps into our piece. His mimicking seemed to have no effect upon the walker. At the end of our performance - nothing. No applause, no cat-calls.
Merely the empty sound of indifference.
It is perhaps difficult for people now to appreciate how important the music was to us. Indeed how important it is to most creative musicians. Lou recalls that after the performance Harvey remarked "nice jam fellas," suggesting that he thought that our music was simply an off-the-cuff casual affair, when of course it was anything but that. The tension and the fragility of the music is clearly evident. We were playing on the edge, and in a weird way the perceived indifference actually contributed to the close physical and psychological activity which is at the heart of such a vulnerable creative act as free improvisation. Ultimately, it may be true
that such conditions contribute greatly to awareness and perceptiveness that can easily be lost by frequent familiarity with the process. Keeping a sense of alertness, and maybe even seeking out vulnerable situations, is one of the ways to maintain a sense of immediacy in the search for those new places.
For years it has been a running joke that London audiences for free music and free jazz and the like have often consisted of "two men and a dog." What is it that makes musicians go on
work-ing with such indifference? Especially in Britain, which perversely has perhaps the greatest proportion of improvising musicians per head of population in the world. This is only
matched by the greatest percentage of audience and institutional neglect and indifference. Those of us who have been lucky and have persevered with our work gain recognition, and not a small part of our income, from our art through playing to audiences outside of our own country. Those who do not, or cannot, engage in the rigors of making a career in such a world are like old soldiers: they do not die, but just fade away.
The psychology of dealing with such indifference is perhaps character forming, and not always in a positive way. It certainly makes for a kind of doggedness. It can easily persuade those so received that their work is of little worth.
Small wonder that the British are often characterised as diffident and reserved. After turning in a performance like you will hear on the accompanying disc, imagine how you might feel about such an indifferent (non-existent) response?
Eddie Prévost, Feb. 2003
Music from half a lifetime ago - that was a very good creative time musically and maybe a new generation will appreciate what we were doing then and still are doing now. Playing with Eddie in that format, just the two of us, was my most
rewarding musical experience after the breakup of the AMM quartet. When Eddie and Keith tried to get it together again with the four of us I could not go back after the freedom of the duo.
Lou Gare, June 2003
For further information on AMM and other recordings by them, please visit: http://www.matchlessrecordings.com/
For more information on Lou Gare,see:http://www.lgare.fsnet.co.uk/
REAR BOOKLET TEXT:
A little background on ICES
ICES was hatched from the mind of Harvey Matusow. An ex-patriot American, he fled to London in the late 1960's to try to start a new life. He was running from a history built up with his involvement with anticommunist crusader Senator
Joseph McCarthy. A section of his life which had landed him time in Lewisburg prison, detailed in his book False Witness. The experience taught him much, mostly about what he didn't want to be. For even in those times, his mind was on
entertainment: writing poems, acting, nightclub comedy, and inventing a toy he called the stringless yo-yo. Back in New York after his discharge, he started publishing The New York
Arts Calender. Upon relocating to London, he helped found The London Film Makers Co-Operative and was involved in the radical underground publications I.T., Friendz, and OZ. Perhaps the most important connection he may have made in
London was to his fourth wife, the composer Anna
Lockwood. He became involved in helping with the
performance of her Glass Concerts, and she became a member of Harvey Matusow's Jews Harp Band. The two were also members of the ensemble Naked Software along with John Lifton, Hugh Davies and Howard Rees. It was in this environment that the idea for an International Carnival of
Experimental Sound was conceived.In 1971, Harvey became European Correspondent for the influential Source magazine where one of the first announcements for the impending festival was made. Over the next year, Harvey reached out
to invite practically anyone in the avant-garde that he knew of. In his wide-sweeping vision of the aural avant-garde, he sought to invite the artists working in the areas of instrument
making, environmental composition, audio electronics and computer electronics, bio-feedback, tactile music, sound light,
education, humor, live with electronics, theatrical, video, events, traditional instruments in new music, and sound-text
compositions. He proposed that the artists come to London on their own dime, but share in the profits made from the festival in whole. The grand plan included not only the concerts and
associated midnight films, but also a book, a series of LPs and a feature-length film.All of this planning lead to a grand beginning. ICES 72 opened on Sunday, August 13 with a
presentation of John Cage's multimedia piece HPSCHD. The huge Roundhouse venue was filled with the sight of 80 slide projector and 16 film projectors casting images on large balloons. Sound issued forth from speakers all around as
well as harpsichords played by David Tudor, Richard Bernas, Cornelius Cardew, Anna Lockwood, Frederick Page, John Tilbury and Roger Woodward. About 1200 spectators were in attendance, while another 2000 were turned away and uncounted others listened at home as the concert was
broadcast by the BBC.Unfortunately, it was not a sign of how the rest of the festival would proceed. After the first
concert, the attendance dropped sharply. Much needed equipment was borrowed and donated, but a lot was also lacking. The money Harvey was providing to the artists for food started to become less and less as the finances wore down. Some artists forgot about the cooperative nature
of the venture, and wondered where their fee was. A few artists wrote to say they weren't coming after all, even after the festival had already started. None of the filmmakers that Harvey had approached came to London in the end. The
publisher the book was pitched to declined to take on the project. Added on top of this, the management of so many artists and performances proved to be too much to handle. Things started to fall apart.Despite all this, Harvey pushed forward. The show must go on. Artists generally made do with what was available. Despite the lack of audience, they
put on great performances. For those involved, it may have been a financial disaster, but it proved to be artistically enlightening. Everyone was surrounded by others like themselves who were interested in and pushing forward the arts. Very importantly, the concerts at the Roundhouse were
recorded, quadraphonically no less. While it may have not accomplished all it set out to, ICES was an adventure that all who came would not forget.However, the recordings from the festival were not to be heard again for a long time. A few
sections were broadcast on WBAI in about 1973 while Geoff Hendricks read from his ICES journal. Excerpts from the AMM, David Rosenboom, and Jon Gibson concerts have seen release. Otherwise, the tapes have been unheard. Harvey's attempts at releasing or broadcasting them were unsuccessful. In the end, Harvey donated the master tapes to
the University of Kansas for safekeeping. Overall, they were in storage for 30 years.Harvey was happy to see these recordings finally becoming available for all to hear, but sadly he passed away shortly after the project to put these tapes onto CD was started.
Eric Lanzillotta, November 2003
TRAY CARD CREDITS:
AMM
at the Roundhouse
1. The Sound of Indifference
Lou Gare - tenor saxophone
Eddie Prévost - drums
AMM was formed in 1965 by Lou Gare, Eddie
Prévost, Keith Rowe, and Lawrence Sheaff. The
line-up swelled to also include Cornelius Cardew
and Christopher Hobbs, and sometimes composer
Christian Wolff. From 1971 up until 1976, AMM
found itself stripped down to the duo of Prévost
and Gare. After that time, Rowe replaced Gare,
and Eddie and Keith have continued making AMMusic
ever since, mostly with the help of John Tilbury,
and occasionally others, and are still a powerful
force.
The aesthetic of AMMis that of improvised music
freed from the constraints of musical style.
Their sound is ever evolving and free from the
ego of individual players.
extracts from this were released as a 7" record
on Incus [Incus EP1 AMM at the Roundhouse]
this is the first release of the complete concert
original recording engineer (1972) - John Lifton
audio wizardry (2002) - Scott Colburn
cover image from INCUS EP 1
inside booklet photographs courtesy of Jak Kilby
image scanning - Carl Lierman
The International Carnival of Experimental Sound, or ICES 72 for short, was an ambitious festival sprung from the mind of Harvey "Job" Matusow (1926-2002). Jumping off from his associations with Source magazine, Harvey brought together
over 300 artists from over 21 countries to perform in London, England, over the course of two weeks in August of 1972. Based on the theme of Myth, Magic, Madness, and Mysticism, he assembled an amazing diversity of performers working in a diverse range of audio-visual arts. Encompassing happenings, films, dance, a train ride, and the phantom soft pool table, the focus was on sound - specifically that of artists who were both composers and performers. Most of the concerts were held at The Roundhouse, a cavernous structure that was formerly a railroad engine house, and recorded by John Lifton and his
assistants. Now, for the first time in 30 years, these recordings can be heard.
Thanks to the Department of Music and Dance at the University of Kansas and the University of Kansas Sound Archive for their storage of the tapes, allowing use of this material and cooperation with the project, and to archivist
Brandon Burke for his help in facilitating. Thanks also to The Gandhi Peace Foundation and AMM for their cooperation in releasing these recordings, and to Scott Colburn, Scott Morris,
Kelly Thistle, Mal Humes, Rodger Stolpen, John Lifton, Jak Kilby, Carl Lierman, Rachael Jackson, Jonathan Coleclough, Chris Freeman, and John Hubbard for their help. And thanks to Harvey for making ICES.
Music composed & © 1972 by Eddie Prévost & Lou Gare and published by Matchless Recordings and
Publishing (PRS/MCPS)
(P) 2003 Anomalous Records
Made in Canada
INSIDE TRAY TEXT (list of artists at ICES):
INTERNATIONAL CARNIVAL OF EXPERIMENTAL SOUND:
MUSTAPHA TETTEY ADDY & OBOADE AMM AMRA/ARMA
AMSTERDAMS ELECTRISCH CIRCUS ANARCHIC CHAMBER MUSIC ASCENSION AUDIO VISUAL STUDIO/ENSEMBLE BEAU GESTE PRESS BEDFORD - COXHILL DUO BIOME BREAD AND CHEESE JOHN CAGE CALIFORNIA TIME MACHINE C.I.M. TIM CRESSWELL'S SOUND GUN DANCE THEATRE COMMUNE ECHO REPLAY SOUND MUSEUM ELECTRIC STEREOPTICON ELECTRO MUSIC ENSEMBLE ENSEMBLE MW2 JULIO ESTRADA
EXIT FYLKINGEN GENTLE FIRE JON GIBSON GROUP GERM* GEOFF HENDRICKS HARMONY BAND LADY JUNE LONDON PHILHARMONIC CHOIR ANTHONY MCCALL CHARLOTTE MOORMAN MUSIC PLUS NAKED SOFTWARE PORTSMOUTH SINFONIA VLADMIR RODZIANKO DAVID ROSENBOOM ROY HART THEATRE CAROLEE SCHNEEMANN SOUND LIGHT & SPACE SPONTANEOUS MUSIC ENSEMBLE STEAM! TAJ MAHAL TRAVELLERS TELETOPA IGNATIUS TEMBA & SUSHA ALICIA
TERZIAN TRANSITION MICHEL WAISVISZ STEVE ALLEN
WHEALTON JOHN WHITE & CHRISTOPHER HOBBS STOMU
YAMASH'TA & THE RED BUDDHA THEATRE
ICES was dedicated to the memory of Alfredo Monteverdi, a man of magic from Brazil. Alfredo Monteverdi was not a musician or composer, but a man of joy and love whose anonymous generosity affected the lives of many people throughout the world.
At The Roundhouse is the first installment of what will hopefully be a series of releases documenting Harvey Matusow's International Carnival of Experimental Sound festival at London's Roundhouse in 1972 (the story of which is told by Eric Lanzillotta in his liner notes), and a major release it is too. Two brief extracts from this concert, which took place on August 22nd that year, were released as a 7" single on Incus, but this is the first time the performance has been available in its entirety.
Mention AMM to most folk today and the names of Keith Rowe and John Tilbury will probably spring to mind, but it's worth recalling that in the mid 1970s the mythic English free improvisation group consisted of just two musicians: percussionist Eddie Prévost and tenor saxophonist Lou Gare. When Rowe rejoined AMM in 1976, Gare bowed out - "I could not go back after the freedom of the duo", he writes in a brief postscript to Prévost's notes to this disc. Gare continued to perform in and around Exeter (where he moved in 1976), and even rejoined AMM briefly later, but in recent years has tended to concentrate on other interests, notably teaching Aikido and making and repairing stringed instruments (if you're in Devon and your fiddle needs a twiddle, go to http://www.lgare.fsnet.co.uk ).
Prévost is right to describe the duo's work as "decidedly non jazz"; true, apart from the instrumentation itself (Interstellar Space inevitably comes to mind), one can find certain points of comparison - Prevost plays his snare drum like Sunny Murray uses his cymbals (think of "Real" on the BYG Actuel album Sunshine) to set up complex fields of vibration, extending the concept of rhythm far beyond the traditional confines of time-keeping - but as Wayne Spencer has pointed out, Gare and Prévost are at their most radical when not playing. Or, rather, when the level of volume and event-density drops to something more akin to today's lowercase improv. "In the silences and pregnant pauses that were a characteristic of our performances you can hear doors swinging open and closed, a child's voice echoes in the distance, and there are other indistinguishable human murmurings and nameless isolated clonks", writes Prevost. "At the end of our performance - nothing. No applause, no cat-calls. Merely the empty sound of indifference."
Small audiences for improvised music are nothing new, though it's hard to imagine music of this quality being greeted with stony silence today - not that one could expect a tenor saxophone / percussion duet to sound anything like this anymore. This particular incarnation of AMM (also documented on the Matchless album To Hear and Back Again) was neither ahead of nor behind its time, but quite simply not of its time. The high-speed clatter of Pauls Lovens and Lytton (not to mention Roger Turner and numerous others), which has become the accepted - I'm tempted to say "traditional" - way of playing percussion in a free improvised context, is notably absent from Prévost's vocabulary. Similarly, Gare's tenor playing bears absolutely no relation either to his immediate predecessors in free jazz (Coltrane, Ayler et al.) or to the then emergent extended techniques of Parker and Brötzmann. Nor is it a precursor of today's saxophone language: multiphonics, key clicks, breathy flutters and splutters are conspicuously absent, as are cathartic blasts of screaming noise. If Prévost had frisbeed his cymbals at the ceiling or destroyed a potted plant or two à la Han Bennink, or if Gare had blown his saxophone through his nose (to quote Zorn) and burst a few blood vessels à la Brötzmann, perhaps the handful of people present in the cavernous space of the Roundhouse would have reacted. But that's not what AMM music has ever been about. Prévost and Gare make no concessions to popular fads and fancies. "It is perhaps difficult for people now to appreciate how important the music was to us", Prévost writes. I seriously doubt that anyone listening attentively to these 47 minutes of extraordinary music could fail to appreciate the importance of this magnificent document.
Dan Warburton
Paris/Transatlantic May 2004