Reissues
Newfoundland (1992)
Restocked, reduced price. "Since its inception in 1966, the cooperative group AMM has been uncompromising in its commitment to freely improvised music. Often, especially early in its existence, this resulted in a harsh, aggressive sound field, one that even the most inquisitive newcomer might have difficulty approaching. By the mid-'80s, perhaps due to the mellowing that comes with age or the addition of pianist John Tilbury, AMM's music took a turn toward the quieter, more contemplative music e…
The Nameless Uncarved Block
In Ed Baxter's liner notes to this recording, he writes, "AMM exists where words fail". Indeed, AMM's steadfast avoidance of music which has any references apart from itself makes descriptive commentary a daunting task. In The Nameless Uncarved Block, however, recorded at live performances during the 1990 Taktlos Festival, the group comes as close as they've ever sounded to something resembling a free jazz unit. Partly, this is due to the inclusion of founding member Lou Gare on tenor sax. His p…
The Inexhaustible Document
Recorded live in London's beautiful Union Chapel in 1987. The organic control of sound on this is spectacular - pretty much a must for serious listeners worldwide.. Free imrovisation in the hands of Amm valorises the unknown, combining unpredictabiity with contexual coherence and the implicit drama of emotion and meaning in play. By opening out the moment it reveals the inherent wilderness of living processes that we lose sight of in an environment of over-determination, where the planned and th…
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…
Generative Themes (1982-83)
The title of this disc, Generative Themes, could be taken as a capsule description of the nature of AMM's music: creating a sound and following it to see where it takes one, generating new sounds along the way, choosing which of these to follow and, as if ambling through a wooded glade or an abandoned building, aurally mapping the territory with precision and poetry. This recording was made relatively shortly after the addition of pianist John Tilbury to the group, resulting in the core band tha…
To Hear and Back Again (1973-75)
** Restocked, reduced price** A reissue of what is chronologically the 3rd full Amm album, following AMM:1966 and The Crypt. Recorded during the years of 1973-75, this marks an unusual and little recognized period in the group's history. For about 5 years, Keith Rowe (and his guitar and electronics) had left the group (along with Cornelius Cardew), leaving AMM as a working duo of Eddie Prévost (drums) and Lou Gare (tenor saxophone). That makes this the most jazz-like version of AMM, but as the l…
AMMMusic
A testament to the interaction between the experimental avant-garde and the countercultural underground, the album was originally released on Elektra, recorded by Jac Holzman (the label's founder, responsible for signing The Doors, Love, and The Stooges) and produced by DNA, a group that included Pink Floyd's first manager, Peter Jenner (the title of Pink Floyd's 'Flaming' is a tribute to AMM's 'Later During a Flaming Riviera Sunset'). Formed in 1965 by three players from the emerging British ja…
Norwich
Norwich, recorded in February, 2005, at the School of Music, University of East Anglia, presents the current two-member AMM of Prévost and Tilbury ” the third two-man version of the group (Prévost played as AMM with saxophonist Lou Gare and then Rowe in the 1970s). Rowe's departure is a tremendous shift, of course, both for his extraordinary sonic resourcefulness and his sometimes abrasive electronics (including his use of random or found verbal and musical messages). However, it is much more im…
Fine
Music for dance, by AMM. Recording of the concert given together with the dancer Fine Kwiatkowski at Musique Action festival produced by CCAM, Vendoeuvre-les-Nancy, France on 24th May 2001. 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 …
Before Driving To the Chapel We Took Coffee With Rick and Jennifer Reed
Awesome set with a sense of suspended time that marks out their musical world. Combined with the quality of attention and the virtuosic command that is evident in each stroke, it is almost hallucinatory in effect - Keith Rowe, John Tilbury, Eddie Prévost. Concert in Houston, Texas. 1996. "A stupendous continuation of the 90's AMM sound, ala previous documents such as Newfoundland, Live In Allentown and From A Strange Place. Shifting patterns consistently emerge; via Prévost's bowed percussion; v…
Laminal
"A three CD set marking thirty years in the making of AMMmusic. Three concert performances: Aarhus, Denmark, 1969. London, 1982. New York, 1994. Featuring variously: Cornelius Cardew, Lou Gare, Christopher Hobbs, Eddie Prévost, Keith Rowe and John Tilbury. Includes an illustrated booklet with commentaries by Jim O'Rourke, Victor Schonfield, Malcolm LeGrice and John Tilbury." Tremendous historical document of all exclusive material to this box, perfectly packaged, desperately awaited. "AMM moves …
The Crypt - 12th June 1968
** Restocked, reduced price** This double CD version of The Crypt - 12th June 1968 is the third edition of this recording and contains all the material that was recorded at the session in question. The fades are at places where the tapes ran out. So there was some music that escaped into the ether. The earlier vinyl pressings limited the amount of material that could be published. And to be honest, after such a long time, we had forgotten about the material excluded hitherto.Despite being (argua…
At the Roundhouse
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 the influential Source magazine, Harvey brought together over 300 artists from more than 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 diverse …
Still Lives
Three amazing works for pure waves and instruments. Lucier has pioneered in many areas of music composition and performance, including the notation of performers’ physical gestures, the use of brain waves in live performance, the generation of visual imagery by sound in vibrating media, and the evocation of room acoustics for musical purposes. His recent works include a series of sound installations and works for solo instruments, chamber ensembles, and orchestra in which, by means of close tuni…
Theme
Theme features three works from Alvin Lucier. Music for Piano with Magnetic Strings is a work in which the strings of a piano sound by themselves. Several EBows (small electromagnets used primarily with electric guitars) which would cause the piano strings to vibrate and sound are placed on the strings of the piano. The pianist works from a prose score which describes the process and suggests she freely position and reposition five EBows on the piano strings, creating strands of sounds of v…
Crossings
1990 CD reissue of prime-era Lucier product, with works from 1982-85. Features 'In Memoriam Jon Higgins (for clarinet in A and slow-sweep pure wave oscillator)', 'Septet for Three Winds, Four Strings and Pure Wave Oscillator', and 'Crossings (for small orchestra with slow-sweep pure wave oscillator)'. Said slow-sweep pure wave oscillator produces slowly swept pure waves that oscillate (on separate occasions) a clarinet, three winds and four strings, and a small orchestra. Maximum beat frequency …
Still and moving lines of silence in families of hyperbolas
Double CD release of of a four-part work, initiated in 1972 and recorded as presented here in 1983-4 and 2001. This reissues two long-out-of-print LPs on Lovely, with four added parts (the strings) released for the first time. A series of mostly solo instrument works for the likes of: clarinet, marimba, viola, voice, xylophone, violin, flute, glockenspiel, cello, horn, vibraphone. Performed by: Thomas Ridenour, William Winant, Dan Panner, Rebecca Armstrong, Conrad Harris, Susan…
I Am Sitting In A Room
In this fascinating exploration of acoustical phenomena, Alvin Lucier slips from the domain of language to that of music in the course of 40 minutes and 32 repetitions of a simple paragraph of text.In I am sitting in a room, several sentences of recorded speech are simultaneously played back into a room and re-recorded there many times. As the repetitive process continues, those sounds common to the original spoken statement and those implied by the structural dimensions of the room are reinforc…
Music on a long thin wire
**Legendary sound installation for audio oscillator and electronic monochord** First released on Lovely Music in 1980. A 50-foot length of taut wire passes through the poles of a large magnet and is driven by an oscillator; the vibrations of the wire are miked at either end, amplified and broadcast in stereo. The thin wire is set vibrating four times at four different frequencies; what results is not the low drone one might expect from a long, vibrating wire, but a complexity of evocative, ether…
Maritime Rites
Featuring the foghorns and other maritime sounds of the U.S. Eastern Seaboard and solo improvisations by John Cage, Joseph Celli, Clark Coolidge, Alvin Curran, Jon Gibson, Malcolm Goldstein, Steve Lacy, George Lewis, Pauline Oliveros, and Leo Smith "In the middle 1970s I began to formulate ideas and projects leading to the making of music outside the concert halls-often in large open and naturally beautiful sites. Ports, rivers, lakes, caves, quarries, fields, and woods, always ready sources of …