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Keith Rowe

Member of: AMM
Grain
The meeting of AMM guitarist Keith Rowe with Burkhard Beins on percussion, two studio sessions and one live recording, sparse and subtle improv of the highest standard.
Shifting Currents
The recordings for the piece were gathered over the course of a year from Huddersfield, Stirling, Aberdeen (United Kingdom), and s’Hertogenbosch (The Netherlands). These were used to create an installation consisting of over 100 tracks that were remixed in real time during each performance. The set up varied from show to show, sometimes playing through 6 speakers and 3 subs, and at other times, through 12 speakers etc. The performers were positioned at the centre of the audience, who in turn, we…
13 Thirteen
Keith Rowe and Michael Pisaro: 13 Thirteen | On this two-and-a-half hour, semi-improvised opus, the two guitarists and composers approach finely wrought detail and vast empty space in ways that can warp one’s perception of time itself. On this two-and-a-half hour, semi-improvised opus, the two guitarists and composers approach finely wrought detail and vast empty space in ways that can warp one’s perception of time itself."On this two-and-a-half hour, semi-improvised opus, the two guitarists and…
Making a
Graham Lambkin first heard Keith Rowe's sixties work in AMM as a teenager growing up in Folkestone, a small town in Kent, England, and for him it was very influential. That same year, Lambkin formed his now legendary band The Shadow Ring and Lambkin says, For Darren (Harris) and I, AMM was one of the groups that gave us licence to just do what we wanted, regardless of whether it fitted with convention or employed 'accepted' techniques, and did so from a very English standpoint which held g…
September
This was the much anticipated final set of Keith Rowe's week in NYC, following five duo sets with various collaborators. It took place on the 10th anniversary of 9/11, and the Manhattan atmosphere was uniquely charged. As he almost always does, Rowe rose to the challenge of the occasion, creating a moving, dense, and virtuosic set in the lineage of his 2004 set with Burkhard Beins in Berlin (ErstLive 001) and his 2008 solo set in Tokyo (ErstLive 007). The recording quality is remarkable, b…
Christian Wolff / Keith Rowe
In September 2011, Erstwhile producer Jon Abbey was invited to curate two weeks of shows at John Zorn's legendary Manhattan venue The Stone, which he used as an opportunity to invite many of his favorite musicians from Japan, Europe and the US to perform. A second three night festival at Issue Project Room was later appended onto the end, making the AMPLIFY 2011: stones festival a 35 set, 17 night extravaganza in all. Four of those thirty-five sets will now be available in the ErstLive se…
Contact
Keith Rowe (guitar, electronics) and Sachiko M (sine wave, contact microphone). Recorded by Taku Unami at Kid Ailack Art Hall, Tokyo on september 21 and september 23, 2008. Mixed by Taku Unami. Mastered by Toshimaru Nakamura.
Keith Rowe - Taku Unami
ErstLive 006 is from the duo of Keith Rowe and Taku Unami, and took place on the first night of the Amplify 2008: light festival in Tokyo in September 2008. This was the first set they'd ever played together. Keith Rowe: guitar, electronics. Taku Unami: computer with objects, contraguitar, mandolin.
AMPLIFY 2002 | Balance
2003 release ** Featuring: Thomas Lehn, Toshimaru Nakamura, Tetuzi Akiyama, Günter Müller, Christof Kurzmann, Taku Sugimoto, Keith Rowe, Marcus Schmickler, Otomo Yoshihide, Burkhard Stangl, Sachiko M, Cosmos. "A document of the 2002 Amplify festival in Tokyo curated by Erstwhile's Jon Abbey. Disc 1 and 7 are smaller club shows that took place outside the Festival proper, disc 2 is a studio session that took place around the time of the festival and discs 3-6 feature eight of the twelve sets that…
Silver Pyramid
Matchless Recordings presents an historic recording. Eddie Prévost's Silver Pyramid performed by Music Now Ensemble directed by Keith Rowe in London in 1969. Includes Cornelius Cardew, Lou Gare, Keith Rowe and others. The music is continuous. Time codes have been inserted at intervals to assist retrieval. Pre-Scratch Orchestra Ensemble formed by / for the occasion of the four day 'Music Now' event at the Roundhouse, 1969. The motley crew perform Eddie Prévost's 'composition' 'Silver Pyramid'. En…
s/t
ErstLive is a new series of releases from Erstwhile Records, documenting notable live sets associated with the label. The discs are designed to simulate a concert experience, each in the same template design using two colors chosen by the musicians involved, with a photo of the concert on the back cover. Each will be in an edition of 800 CDs and not reprinted. The initial releases will be chosen from the AMPLIFY 2004 festival which took place in Cologne and Berlin in May 2004. ErstLive …
Rabbit Run
Keith Rowe: tabletop guitar, electronics  Thomas Lehn: analogue synthesizer  Marcus Schmickler: digital synthesizer, computer
Dial: log-rhythm
Two concerts of experimental improvisation from Eddie Prevost and Christian Wolff, two giants of conceptual improvisation and composition, recorded at Ikletick in London in 2015 and at Dartmouth College, in Hanover, New Hampshire in 2016; with superb pacing and brilliant execution, these dialogs between keyboard and percussive instruments explore unique sound worlds with depth, inquisitiveness, and a sense of wonder. "The set documents two concerts - 1, recorded at Iklectik in London in Septembe…
The world turned upside down
A document of a performance last autumn at Parisian Improv spot Instants Chavires, in which Günter Müller is flanked by two very different but distinctive users of the electric guitar. On one side of the stage is Keith Rowe, who's worked for half a lifetime to unsettle the boundaries between music and noise. On the other is the restrained presence of Taku Sugimoto, whose crabbed phrases waft above the shifting timbral networks laid down by the other two. The trio's music is dominated by rasps an…
Live at the LU
Recorded in May of 2002, almost a year after Fennesz' surprisingly successful (commercially) release, Endless Summer, one might have expected that this pairing would produce an intriguing collision of opposing forces. On the one hand you have all the pop-influenced, steamily melodic and erotic explorations that Fennesz had developed in the prior years. Countering that, one could readily imagine Keith Rowe as saboteur, finding rifts in the smooth mass to deviously penetrate and deflate. This does…
Combine + Laminates + Treatise (1984)
** Restocked, reduced price** A re-issue of the Pogus LP format with additional material taken from the same concert at the Arts Club, Chicago, USA, 25th May 1984. The difference in the music included on this CD version is the addition of Treatise '84. This, as the audience was aware, was an Amm improvisation inspired and guided, rather than dictated or controlled by Cornelius Cardew's graphic masterpiece. There is, of course, no way that this work could be identified as a composition in the acc…
Tunes Without Measure or End
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 Meas…
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