AMM

In 1966, the year “AMMMusic” was recorded, various artists with a classical background had already composed pieces for orchestra or jazz band: George Gershwin had done so in 1924 with "Rhapsody In Blue", Dmitri Shostakovich in 1934 with "Suite for Jazz Orchestra No. 1, Op. 38b" and in 1937 with "Suite for Jazz Orchestra No. 2", to name just two examples from the Russian composer. There was also his fellow countryman Stravinsky, with 1946's "Ebony Concerto", or the vastly underrated George Russell (the little-known inventor and theorist of modal jazz, with the Lydian scale) with the stroke of genius that was "A Bird In Igor's Yard", recorded by Buddy DeFranco's band, the first meeting point between the nightingale style of alto saxophonist Charlie Parker and the canons of Igor Stravinsky.

Leaving aside the work carried out up to that point by AMM leader Cornelius Cardew - from the moment in 1958 when he abandoned the serial ambitions of Boulez and Stockhausen to move closer to the aleatory approach and total improvisation of Cage and Tudor - would do a real disservice to the reader's understanding, since AMM's output has little or nothing in common with the aforementioned jazz-orchestra projects (beyond making use of a jazz band, which, indeed, is not an orchestra, and does not compose in advance) and even less with serial and twelve-tone music; it instead bears far more resemblance to Cardew's earlier works.

Let's proceed in order, though: the leader's compositions are as follows, all dating from after 1958 and based on improvisation (unlike all the pieces cited in the introduction): the octet for six winds, violin and double bass from 1959, "Autumn" from 1960 for an orchestra of any instruments whatsoever, a transmusical octet (accompanied by graphic effects) dated 1961, and "Volo", a solo piece for any hand-operated instrument, from 1964.

"AMMMusic" is, to be precise, a record of total improvisation with electroacoustic timbres, played by a jazz band and chamber ensemble together, which structurally draws more on the improvisational works of Cardew himself, on Feldman, LaMonte Young and Tudor, than on the orchestral compositions of Gershwin or Shostakovich; more on Ornette Coleman than on Parker-style be-bop; more on harmonies built on diatonic chords than on Davis-style modal jazz à la Russell.

The initial survey of classical compositions for jazz orchestras thus serves as a historical point of reference regarding the timbres used by AMM, which include winds, band-style percussion, a string trio typical of chamber music, and the concrete sounds drawn from three battery-powered FM radios (known as transistor radios, after the technology of the same name).

"AMMMusic" was influential on John Zorn, in timbre, emotion and structure alike, but also on early Pink Floyd (the still philosophically hippie team behind the spatial, cosmic psychedelia of "The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn", 1967, and the near-raga "A Saucerful Of Secrets" from 1968), for its concrete and electronic sense of alienation, and even on the improvised atonal noise of the Velvet Underground's "White Light/White Heat" (the seventeen minutes of guitar distortion and noise on "Sister Ray" follow the same principle, albeit in a more psychedelic vein, for a rock band - and, in the future, for noise and industrial acts - as the tectonic tonal upheavals of AMM).

The sessions took place from 8 to 27 June 1966 (among the observers in the studio was their friend Syd Barrett, who was left deeply impressed). In 1967 Elektra released the album including only the two longest improvisations, for a total of 41 minutes, but the quintet had actually recorded over an hour of music, which finally saw the light in full in 1989, when RéR reissued the album under the title "AMMMusic 1966". This review refers to that second version.

The opener "Later During A Flaming Riviera Sunset" is a piercing lament from Lawrence Sheaff's clarinet, over which rage the string trio - Cardew's cello, Lou Gare's violin and Sheaff's second cello - and the micro-explosive distortions of Gare's tenor sax and accordion and Keith Rowe's electric guitar; these explosions are micro precisely because all of them, coming from the most disparate instruments, carve out hysterical yet extremely compressed (diatonic) harmonies, synthetic and dense, like so many undiluted colours that, merging into one another, form a new one, unified and richly detailed (unified, by definition, does not mean singular - it is a whole made of many particulars).

As the track draws to a close the tension builds, pervading the listener and spreading into a mounting dread, like the foreboding of a predator's ambush, well conveyed by Eddie Prévost's percussive thuds.

The improvised harmonic and contrapuntal dissonances that dominate the record are not the result of heavy use of magnetic tape for analogue recorders enabling multitracking, as was typical at the time (and even later, with digital recorders, up until the advent of ProTools in the 2000s), but rather of the musicians' tightrope-walking work across several instruments at once (at least three each, aside from the percussionist), including the portable FM radios operated by Cardew, Rowe and Sheaff, which bring in the voices of announcers and news broadcasts along with the usual crackle of such devices.

If the first track is a "wind-instrument" version of the small string ensembles so beloved of the twelve-tone composers, "Ailantus Glandulosa" finds the creaks and gurgles of the sax bolstered by the almost gargling screeches of the electric guitar and by the Cagean alterations to Cardew's piano, already present in the opening track, alongside low, deep percussion, vocal melodies lifted from country and rock 'n' roll, and the studied voices of radio broadcasts. A dark, distorted take on Varèse. The original touch comes from the gong and percussion, the record's true emotional protagonists alongside the strings. "In The Realm Of Nothing Whatever" is an encounter between assorted atonal distortions and "Amazonian" percussion worthy of a cannibal tribe's sacrificial rite. The hallucinatory horns exacerbate a postmodern despair that is as industrial as it is animal, a schizophrenic split between the laborious Ego and the instinctive Id and the severe, ambitious Superego, gripped by the worst possible terror: the loss and fragmentation of the self; like the final moments of a condemned man, when waiting stretches time into an eternal, indeterminate present.

"After Rapidly Circuling Plaza" proves that, when concrete sounds are given the timbres common to jazz and rock, one can dig very deep into the chasms of the most restless, fearful psyche. The piece rarely allows moments of relief, an expression of an inner concentration camp, of the nightmare of being unable to escape the prison of one's own body and being, of one's own fears, of the residual moral nihilism of totalitarianisms that strips the individual of dignity and identity.

For aesthetes, art is the imitation of nature, and contemporary art an abstract spiritualisation - hence a non-art. But if nihilistic madness is an expression of human nature, then this record is art: an expressionist, paranoid art that few have the courage to listen to, and very few to listen to again. If "AMMMusic" is the Jurassic Park of psychic pathologies, "After Rapidly..." is its tyrannosaur.

"What Is There In Uselessness To Cause You Distress?" is another three minutes of delirium. The ten seconds of silence at the end are the usual, childish Dadaist affectation in the Cagean mould.

Only John Zorn would reach these peaks, albeit on a more externalised, and thus more lethal, front.

"AMMMusic" is a record that lives on timbres and harmonies (or rather, disharmonies), rather than on melodies or, still less, on rhythms; total improvisation strips the music of any rhythmic quality, bringing it closer to the style of a film score than to jazz or rock (two genres that are, after all, essentially rhythmic); what it borrows from jazz, rock or chamber music are the instruments (alongside the concrete sounds), while the structure is entirely free of labels or defined forms.

Revision by Federico Romagnoli

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21/02/2010