review 3 Vital Weekly

AMM have been around since probably a lot of readers where not born or still in diapers - and that includes me. Since the mid sixties AMM is a group including Eddie Prevost, Keith Rowe, Lou Gare and Lawrence Sheaff, later versions included also Cornelius Cardew, Christopher Hobbs and Christian Wolff. By 1972, when this recording was made, AMM was only Prevost on percussion and Gare on tenor saxophone. Today AMM still exists of Prevost, Rowe (guitar) and John Tilbury (piano). In August 1972 a festival was held in London called the International Carnival of Experimental Sound, short ICES 72, organised by Harvey "Job" Matusow, which included some 300 artists from over 21 countries. The festival included films, dance, happenings but the main thing was music.

Anomalous Records, no longer an excellent mailorder service, now unearthed the recordings of the festival and AMM kick off what will hopefully be an excellent series of unusual, improvised music. This is the first time that the entire concert is released (there was a 7" of some of this concert by Incus in the seventies). Although a line up of drums and a sxaophone might ring a 'jazz' bell, Prevost states in the liner notes that their work was 'decidedly non jazz' - but for the untrained ear, this might be hard to believe. The free improvised music here (and more from the same period), I think, is the most jazz work of the entire AMM work - the element of silence that has become a later trademark of AMM, is present here already, but only for shorter periods. The liner notes also recall the indifference of the audience during the concert. That might be so, but luckily enough the concert was recorded and now we can enjoy it. This is an essential recording to understand more about the development of AMMusic and should be part of anyone's collection of improvised music (like, I must add, all other AMM releases).

Frans de Waard in Vital Weekly 413