Biography
An English threesome of ex-jazz players who chafed against the boundaries they saw in that idiom launched AMM, a unit that ranks among the longest-running free improvisation ensembles across recorded music. Their assembly arose from a shared impulse to generate sound from emptiness. Beginning in the mid-1960s and continuing through shifting lineups, the collective has followed a path defined by authentic exploration. Functioning as a group in which only percussionist Eddie Prévost has remained constant, they avoid any spontaneous music that echoes or copies existing idioms. Their method stresses restraint, prizes quiet and openness, and centers on attentive engagement with one another plus surroundings. Later periods brought experiments in sound production through heavily modified tools and novel techniques that included prepared pianos, rubbed cymbals, radios wired to guitar pickups, natural and synthetic devices, and comparable elements. Though they remained outside mainstream notice for most of their span, the outfit reached the top of the UK singles chart for seven days in 1981 with The Crypt, a two-disc archive release drawn from a 1968 nightclub set. Global esteem has accrued to them within experimental music and art communities.
The acronym AMM carries an unknown significance. Guitarist Keith Rowe, saxophonist Lou Gare, and Prévost formed the project in 1965, initially not as a band but as an extension of weekend experimental workshops held at London's Royal College of Art. Rowe and Gare belonged to Mike Westbrook's ensemble, while Prévost and Gare also played in a hard bop jazz quintet. Though jazz musicians served as inspiration, all three felt restricted by the genre when pursuing sonic discovery. They sought to produce music of the instant that embodied liberation from prior tradition. This outlook aligned them with other emerging improvisation collectives of the period, among them the Spontaneous Music Ensemble started by drummer/trumpeter John Stevens and alto and soprano saxophonist Trevor Watts.
Early appearances welcomed additional players, yet involvement in AMM performances often proved brief whenever contributions lacked the requisite spirit. American soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy provided a well-known early instance of a musician instructed to cease playing mid-set for that reason. The core membership eventually stabilized as Prévost, Rowe, Gare, bassist/cellist Lawrence Sheaff, and composer, pianist, and cellist Cornelius Cardew. By early 1966 they adopted the name AMM, though a handful of initial shows were erroneously credited to the Cornelius Cardew Quintet. After several concerts Cardew introduced amplifiers so other instruments could match the volume of Rowe's guitar. Cardew and Gare also attached contact microphones to everyday objects to magnify organically produced sounds. From the outset no performance received advance planning; each arose spontaneously and thus remained singular. The musicians generally sidestepped standard melody, harmony, or rhythm in pursuit of a collective texture that blurred individual identities, occasionally rendering it hard to identify which instrument produced a given sound. Following numerous appearances in late 1965 and early 1966, AMM issued their debut album, Ammmusic 1966, on Elektra Records. Reviewers noted limited parallels to free jazz, attributable to Gare's saxophone participation. Sheaff departed soon after the album's release and, according to all reports, abandoned music entirely.
A June 12, 1968 performance at the Crypt was captured and issued. Over subsequent decades it has surpassed the stature of the first album and later releases by establishing the droning, extended format that became AMM's signature practice. More radical than the prior recording, The Crypt sessions have undergone repeated reissues, even prior to chart success. They appeared twice in the 1980s, at least twice more in the 1990s, and now circulate as The Crypt: The Complete Sessions on the band's Matchless Recordings imprint. Composer Christian Wolff joined AMM in 1968, while pianist and future member John Tilbury substituted for Cardew at shows when the latter was absent. A split album with Musica Elettronica Viva titled Live Electronic Music Improvised appeared on Mainstream in 1970.
Cardew and Rowe embraced socialism and Maoism, believing the group's music should embody that sociopolitical stance. The resulting friction produced alternating duo performances: Rowe with Cardew, and Prévost with Gare. This strain largely halted group activity in 1972. Occasional shows featured only the Prévost-Gare duo, yielding the 1974 album To Hear and Back Again, which remained unreleased until 1978 as Matchless's inaugural release. By then Rowe had returned and Gare had exited. Recording as AMM III, Rowe and Prévost delivered the well-regarded It Had Been an Ordinary Enough Day in Pueblo, Colorado for JAPO in 1980. The initial Matchless edition of The Crypt surfaced in 1981; buoyed by enthusiastic critical notices and John Peel's advocacy, the album ascended to the top of the pop chart for one week.
Tilbury joined AMM formally in late 1980. Unlike Cardew, his instrument stayed consistently identifiable, and his clear, understated style shaped the trio's work and concerts, prompting even Rowe to temper his guitar approach into a subtler backdrop for his partners. This trio configuration endured roughly two decades, becoming a widely touring and frequently recorded act that performed throughout Europe and North America. Numerous releases emerged during this productive stretch, among them 1983's Generative Themes, 1990's Combine And Laminates, the triple-disc Laminal in 1996, Before Driving to the Chapel We Took Coffee with Rick and Jennifer Reed in 1997, a 1999 split with Merzbow on FatCat, and both Tunes Without Measure or End and Fine in 2001.
Entering the new century, Rowe began pursuing separate projects and partnerships beyond AMM, issuing solo material on Erstwhile Records. The 2004 essay collection Minute by Prévost contained pointed remarks about Rowe that prompted his second departure, again reducing AMM to a duo. Prévost and Tilbury continued recording and performing as AMM, occasionally with guests such as saxophonist Evan Parker, Sachiko M, and David Jackman. Their first duo release in that format, Norwich, appeared in 2005, followed by the 2009 collaboration Trinity with saxophonist John Butcher. A quintet lineup including Butcher, Christian Wolff, and Ute Kanngiesser presented "Sounding Music" at the Freedom of the City festival at Conway Hall, London that same year. The duo resumed recording with 2010's Uncovered Correspondence and 2011's Two London Concerts. A 2014 document of their concert at CODES - The Festival of Traditional and Avant-garde Music in Lublin, Poland was issued as Place Sub. V, and a 2012 performance from Festival Neposlušno in Ljubljana, Slovenia followed in 2015 as Spanish Fighters.
Rowe rejoined for European concerts spanning late 2015 into mid-2016. Lou Gare died in 2017. In tribute Matchless released the three-disc set An Unintended Legacy in 2018, drawn from shows in London, Paris, and Trondheim, Norway. The package contained a seventy-page booklet honoring Gare that featured an AMM discography, photographs, and essays by Paige Mitchell and Allen Fisher, Rowe, Prévost, and Gare. That year a digital-only collaboration by Prévost and Tilbury from a 2016 Berlin performance with A Trio (Mazen Kerbaj, Raed Yassin, Sharif Sehnaoui) appeared as AAMM on Lebanon's Al Maslakh label and received a physical reissue in 2019 with a bonus single from the Netherlands' Unrock imprint.
The acronym AMM carries an unknown significance. Guitarist Keith Rowe, saxophonist Lou Gare, and Prévost formed the project in 1965, initially not as a band but as an extension of weekend experimental workshops held at London's Royal College of Art. Rowe and Gare belonged to Mike Westbrook's ensemble, while Prévost and Gare also played in a hard bop jazz quintet. Though jazz musicians served as inspiration, all three felt restricted by the genre when pursuing sonic discovery. They sought to produce music of the instant that embodied liberation from prior tradition. This outlook aligned them with other emerging improvisation collectives of the period, among them the Spontaneous Music Ensemble started by drummer/trumpeter John Stevens and alto and soprano saxophonist Trevor Watts.
Early appearances welcomed additional players, yet involvement in AMM performances often proved brief whenever contributions lacked the requisite spirit. American soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy provided a well-known early instance of a musician instructed to cease playing mid-set for that reason. The core membership eventually stabilized as Prévost, Rowe, Gare, bassist/cellist Lawrence Sheaff, and composer, pianist, and cellist Cornelius Cardew. By early 1966 they adopted the name AMM, though a handful of initial shows were erroneously credited to the Cornelius Cardew Quintet. After several concerts Cardew introduced amplifiers so other instruments could match the volume of Rowe's guitar. Cardew and Gare also attached contact microphones to everyday objects to magnify organically produced sounds. From the outset no performance received advance planning; each arose spontaneously and thus remained singular. The musicians generally sidestepped standard melody, harmony, or rhythm in pursuit of a collective texture that blurred individual identities, occasionally rendering it hard to identify which instrument produced a given sound. Following numerous appearances in late 1965 and early 1966, AMM issued their debut album, Ammmusic 1966, on Elektra Records. Reviewers noted limited parallels to free jazz, attributable to Gare's saxophone participation. Sheaff departed soon after the album's release and, according to all reports, abandoned music entirely.
A June 12, 1968 performance at the Crypt was captured and issued. Over subsequent decades it has surpassed the stature of the first album and later releases by establishing the droning, extended format that became AMM's signature practice. More radical than the prior recording, The Crypt sessions have undergone repeated reissues, even prior to chart success. They appeared twice in the 1980s, at least twice more in the 1990s, and now circulate as The Crypt: The Complete Sessions on the band's Matchless Recordings imprint. Composer Christian Wolff joined AMM in 1968, while pianist and future member John Tilbury substituted for Cardew at shows when the latter was absent. A split album with Musica Elettronica Viva titled Live Electronic Music Improvised appeared on Mainstream in 1970.
Cardew and Rowe embraced socialism and Maoism, believing the group's music should embody that sociopolitical stance. The resulting friction produced alternating duo performances: Rowe with Cardew, and Prévost with Gare. This strain largely halted group activity in 1972. Occasional shows featured only the Prévost-Gare duo, yielding the 1974 album To Hear and Back Again, which remained unreleased until 1978 as Matchless's inaugural release. By then Rowe had returned and Gare had exited. Recording as AMM III, Rowe and Prévost delivered the well-regarded It Had Been an Ordinary Enough Day in Pueblo, Colorado for JAPO in 1980. The initial Matchless edition of The Crypt surfaced in 1981; buoyed by enthusiastic critical notices and John Peel's advocacy, the album ascended to the top of the pop chart for one week.
Tilbury joined AMM formally in late 1980. Unlike Cardew, his instrument stayed consistently identifiable, and his clear, understated style shaped the trio's work and concerts, prompting even Rowe to temper his guitar approach into a subtler backdrop for his partners. This trio configuration endured roughly two decades, becoming a widely touring and frequently recorded act that performed throughout Europe and North America. Numerous releases emerged during this productive stretch, among them 1983's Generative Themes, 1990's Combine And Laminates, the triple-disc Laminal in 1996, Before Driving to the Chapel We Took Coffee with Rick and Jennifer Reed in 1997, a 1999 split with Merzbow on FatCat, and both Tunes Without Measure or End and Fine in 2001.
Entering the new century, Rowe began pursuing separate projects and partnerships beyond AMM, issuing solo material on Erstwhile Records. The 2004 essay collection Minute by Prévost contained pointed remarks about Rowe that prompted his second departure, again reducing AMM to a duo. Prévost and Tilbury continued recording and performing as AMM, occasionally with guests such as saxophonist Evan Parker, Sachiko M, and David Jackman. Their first duo release in that format, Norwich, appeared in 2005, followed by the 2009 collaboration Trinity with saxophonist John Butcher. A quintet lineup including Butcher, Christian Wolff, and Ute Kanngiesser presented "Sounding Music" at the Freedom of the City festival at Conway Hall, London that same year. The duo resumed recording with 2010's Uncovered Correspondence and 2011's Two London Concerts. A 2014 document of their concert at CODES - The Festival of Traditional and Avant-garde Music in Lublin, Poland was issued as Place Sub. V, and a 2012 performance from Festival Neposlušno in Ljubljana, Slovenia followed in 2015 as Spanish Fighters.
Rowe rejoined for European concerts spanning late 2015 into mid-2016. Lou Gare died in 2017. In tribute Matchless released the three-disc set An Unintended Legacy in 2018, drawn from shows in London, Paris, and Trondheim, Norway. The package contained a seventy-page booklet honoring Gare that featured an AMM discography, photographs, and essays by Paige Mitchell and Allen Fisher, Rowe, Prévost, and Gare. That year a digital-only collaboration by Prévost and Tilbury from a 2016 Berlin performance with A Trio (Mazen Kerbaj, Raed Yassin, Sharif Sehnaoui) appeared as AAMM on Lebanon's Al Maslakh label and received a physical reissue in 2019 with a bonus single from the Netherlands' Unrock imprint.
Albums
Singles
