AMM

*In process of stocking. 2022 stock.* More than half a century has elapsed since the founding of the legendary British free improvisation group AMM. We could say there would be no free improvisation as we know it today without AMM’s Eddie Prévost, John Tilbury and Keith Rowe. The mystery surrounding AMM has not faded; to the contrary, even nowadays it carries a particular appeal due to its engaged, intelligible and nonetheless radical message.

AMM Until The Next Time Next Festival LP 2019 In 1966 the late Victor Schonfield wrote of “sounds like those made by flocks of birds, dogs, sirens, rain on a tin roof, buzz-saws, bubbling lava, giant insects ripping and slashing at steel doors, or electrified cats and babies” in AMM music. Versions of these are here in this recording from Bratislava. AMM music remains an ongoing vehicle or vessel for contemplation, looking back and moving on. A way of being, knowing and feeling for all present, almost sentimental perhaps in its memory. Midway through the performance Rowe introduces a thread of what seems to be a recording or radio broadcast of gagaku music – another important early reference for AMM – ritual sounds from centuries past and another world that entangle with theirs. Attached to this aggregate of sounds we hear time, the weight of lives lived – ballast, anchor, crutch, compass and ladder. The final minutes are one long emergent silence –footsteps, bodies, coughs, uncertain and eventually emphatic applause. 
Written by Seymour Wright - The Wire, 461


N.O. Moore writes in the
“The musician makes music audible. The improviser makes music differ from itself. AMM calls forth music at the same time as simply allowing it to arrive, unbidden, as if sound were as indifferent to us as any other natural phenomena.

Against the egalitarianism of sounds (…), we reserve the right to fail – that is, we take the risk of evaluation. Next time, we will get it right? … That is the wrong question. AMM: the next time is to be heard here, now, sounding out … almost.” - N.O. Moore, ‘Until The Next Time’ liner notes