Cornelius Cardew
Cornelius Cardew (1936 - 1981) was an English avant-garde composer, and founder (with Howard Skempton and Michael Parsons) of the Scratch Orchestra, an experimental performing ensemble. He later rejected the avant-garde in favour of a politically motivated 'people's liberation music'.
Cornelius Cardew (1936 - 1981) was an English avant-garde composer, and founder (with Howard Skempton and Michael Parsons) of the Scratch Orchestra, an experimental performing ensemble. He later rejected the avant-garde in favour of a politically motivated 'people's liberation music'.
Member of: AMM
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…
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…
From a strange place
Undisputed deans of the meta-music, captured live on their first ever tour of Japan in October 1995. After 30 years of AMMusic there's very little left to be said about the group. Suffice to say that this is more of their totally committed style of pure improvisation, scaling new heights of non-derivativeness. Music created with a piercing awareness of place and time, once created never to be repeated, even by themselves. This set was marked by an extreme level of quietness, a grappling with sil…
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 …
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…
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 …