AMM

Last Calls is the final concert of AMM, played at Cafe OTO in London on 30 July 2022. It closed Making a Journey to a Bright Nowhere, the series for Eddie Prévost's 80th birthday, and ended a group Prévost had played in since 1965. It was meant to be the trio with Keith Rowe and John Tilbury, but Tilbury's health kept him away. AMM played as a duo of Prévost and Rowe, with the piano covered and moved to the side. Tilbury answered from home with a solo, Postscript, which closes the disc.

Rowe, who by then had stopped playing guitar because of Parkinson's disease, worked with recordings and samples. David Grundy heard Rowe's own guitar, Tilbury playing Feldman's For Bunita Marcus, gagaku, Purcell's funeral music for Queen Mary and swells of sine tones. Marc Medwin adds Wagner's Tristan prelude and a voice from a radio twelve minutes in. Prévost bowed tam-tam and cymbals, played bass drum and snare, and at times left an electric toothbrush buzzing on the bass drum. The set runs 53 minutes, sparse at first, then building layers before thinning out. It ended in about a minute of shared silence before anyone moved. Grundy called the evening both apotheosis and relinquishment (2022). For Stuart Broomer, the solemn activity did not suggest waiting for Godot, since it feels like Godot is already there (The Free Jazz Collective, 2023). The Wire's Derek Walmsley named it concert of the year 2022. Tilbury's 13-minute Postscript was recorded at his home in Deal, Kent, on 18 January 2023.

Released by Matchless Recordings in 2023 on CD (MRCD 112), volume four of the Bright Nowhere series, with notes by Prévost and Tilbury's Letter from an Absent Pianist.