AMM: A Free Improv

The Roundhouse was apparently a renovated (or not so much) train station where Brit groups played during the sixties. It wasn’t all esoteric weirdness as Pink Floyd showed up at times. But during ’72, The International Carnival of Experimental Sound took over the space and featured hundreds of acts from across the world that worked in various unclassifiable sound. Of course, being in England, the AMM cohort showed its face.

By the ‘70s, though, the group that once counted innumerable contributors was down to a simply sax and drum duo comprising Eddie Prévost (drums) and Lou Gare (sax). Although, AMM would make its first recordings during the mid ‘60s, just a half decade removed from Ornette Coleman’s Free Jazz, the Brit ensemble would confound audiences in its mélange of improv and modern classical tropes. As much of a problem as free jazz would cause in the jazz genre in the States, the British cohabitation of those sounds proved to be even more troublesome to a staid European music community.

Working to define what AMM was seems like a useless endeavor seeing as from performance to performance and recording to recording, its line up might include Keith Rowe or any number of other top tier improvisers. From its first recording – the 1966, yellow truck sporting AMMMusic – to this live set, it’d also be difficult to blindly attribute the albums to the same group.

That being said, the spirit of everything that AMM did, whoever constituted the line up, was simply that of exploration. Certain occasions worked better than others, and during At the Roundhouse it’s interesting to note the pauses or shifts between different sections of the single forty six minute effort.

Beginning in an all out effrontery of the audience’s hearing, Prévost and Gare apparently don’t need a theme to work with. The duo, after a brief hesitation marking the beginning of the improvisation immediately launch into something that might have come out of a more thoughtful and less guttural, latter day Coltrae-Ali recording or even Albert Ayler if he chose to work in a duo setting.

The crowd, which should be assumed surprised if nothing else, doesn’t voice any deep appreciation of what’s going on. Of course, the fact that the duo doesn’t really allow space for applause might have something to do with that. But in the ceaseless performance, listeners should be able to extract the basic tenets of AMM – even if by this point on At the Roundhouse, the line up wasn’t necessarily representative of what the group was during its inception.

British experimental music from the period – ‘60s or ‘70s – doesn’t have any through line. It does, though, sport an unassuming deference towards its American counterparts. Some of these folks are still kicking around – perhaps John Butcher being the most well known and visible right now. But regardless of who the biggest names are or were, AMM and this set in particular, point to an understanding of improv and freedom that not too many players would be able to conjure.