review 4 absurdities

AMM's "at the roundhouse" has always been a kind of a mythical recording especially for the cycles of the early british/free improv scenes as it was an obscure 7" issued on incus some 3 decades ago and ever since was a hard to find item. It wasn't though until a couple of years when eric @ anomalous showed an evergrowing interest in obtaining infos & recordings around the ices festival of 72 where the actual amm set took place and almost a year when he announced the forthcoming cd reissue of the amm's entire set of that festival from which the grooves of the incus 7" were cut. gotta admit that my knowledge for ices festival was almost zero and was thanks to eric that did I learn infos about it I must also admit that regarding the whole festival thing I wished eric or someone could track down more infos, etc plus more recordings in order to do a kind of a retrospective box or something like that reissue, without meaning to underestimate the reissue of amm's music of course. the introductory cd booklet notes work as a great guide to it and lots of weird scenarios were born in my mythoplastic imagination around it. but coming to the recording itself. Is a documented era of amm's mark 2, where for nearly 5-6 years the super improv group is down to 2 members, eddie prevost on percussion and lou gare on sax. the duo that issued the memorable "hear and back again' lp in the early 70's (reissued on cd on matchless) and to be honest must be one of the amm eras that don't work that good for me. an era that today sounds more affiliated to free jazz to my ears rather than the bizarre free improv nature am looking for. this doesn't mean that that the recording is kinda jazzy nor expect to listen the standard free jazz patterns of that era instead I think that captures the atmosphere of the more classic free musics live spirit of that time.

- Nicolas in absurdities #10