Hi everyone,
This week, let’s talk about the avant garde improvisational music group AMM.
Founded in 1965 by another group of eccentric, iconoclastic British art-school-students-turned-musicians, AMM’s origin story is woven into the cultural fabric of the Sixties. A key part of the London underground scene, they performed at the iconic 1967 “happening” 14-Hour Technicolor Dream and at Yoko Ono’s opening exhibition at the Indica Gallery (Yoko stayed at the flat belonging to one of AMM’s founding members when she first arrived in London). They were an early influence on Pink Floyd, and Syd Barrett reportedly took some of his guitar technique from them.
AMM performed occasionally at the underground club UFO, but as Barry Miles — who was loosely associated with UFO — put it, “they used to annoy people enormously.”1 This is probably why they often performed only for invited guests. One of those guests was Paul McCartney, which is why we're talking about AMM here.
Most of us know, of course, that both Paul and John were deeply influenced by the avant garde music scene and brought much of that influence into the studio, both lyrically and musically. Musically, the still-unheard “Carnival of Light” is likely the purest expression of Fab avant garde, but the experimental and improvisational influence of groups like AMM also shows up in their use of tape loops, backwards masking, randomness and the embrace of creative accidents, nontraditional instruments, single notes that aren’t part of the formal structure of the song, abrupt and often dissonant shifts in chord progressions, tempo and time signature, and in the unexpected use of silence. To name just a few examples.
And, of course, both Paul and John continued their exploration of experimental music in their solo work. John dove deep into experimental music in his work with Yoko on the White Album track “Revolution 9” and on a series of avant garde albums beginning with Two Virgins. Paul has explored the avant garde throughout his solo career — most notably in his “Fireman” collaborations with Youth and his Grammy-nominated experimental album Liverpool Sound Collage, composed for pop artist Peter Blake’s 2000 exhibition at Liverpool’s Tate Gallery.2
All of which is to say that it’s not off the spine to get curious about a genre of music that so strongly captured the creative attention of history’s most influential musical partnership that to this day, we continue to argue whether Paul or John was the first to be influenced by it. (the answer as usual isn’t either/or but both/and)
Like experimental composers John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen, AMM explored the question of whether music could exist without a melody or a rhythm or any kind of prescribed form at all. They also experimented widely with non-traditional sounds and instruments. (I don't know if it was before or after “A Day In The Life,” but AMM, too, used an alarm clock as an instrument.)
But though they drew from the same ideas, AMM took their experimentation much further than either Stockhausen or Cage. Their work was entirely improvisational and free-form. And in keeping with the exploration of collective consciousness that marked the Love Revolution (and not unlike the Grateful Dead), AMM is perhaps most noted for exploring the outer boundaries of collaboration and the group mind in the context of creating music.
The Crypt is AMM’s most famous piece of work. Named after the London club in which it was recorded in June of 1968 as an improvisational performance, The Crypt is frequently cited as one of the most important albums made during the Sixties cultural revolution (though of course not most popular or well known). It’s also a landmark recording in avant garde music —- some critics and scholars consider The Crypt the first free form experimental music album. Since its initial release, it’s been re-issued twice on CD and vinyl.
This week, as part of my research for Part Two of Beautiful Possibility, The Crypt has me captivated to the point where I’m having a hard time re-calibrating my ears to structured music, even of the Fab variety. (A condition which — I trust — will pass.)
A 2018 review calls The Crypt “an incredible example of unparalleled unity among the musicians.”3 “Not a single player is actively ‘playing’ his instrument,” writes another reviewer in 2003. “The sound is sustained — seemingly supernaturally — by the simple presence of the group.”4 Swiss saxophonist Bertrand Denzler once commented about AMM that “when I think of AMM, I hear a group sound, Not the sound of the group members but the sound of the group.”5
If all of this sounds a bit like the extraordinary chemistry that’s often talked about relative to The Beatles — that near-miraculous telepathic “mind meld” that allowed the four of them to sense what the others were going to play before they played it — well... yes.
Paul once commented that AMM performances were “too long,” but they undeniably had an influence. The free-form improvisational influence of AMM shows itself, to my ears, most strongly in “First Version/Take 2” of “Helter Skelter,” an extended studio improvisation that has never been released in its full-length form. A four-and-a-half-minute version of “First Version/Take 2” was included on Anthology and a thirteen-minute (but still not full-length) version was included on the Super Deluxe re-mix of The White Album.
Even if you’ve heard this track before, I strongly encourage a focused, intentional deep listen. It will do things to your head.6
As for The Crypt, I listen to a fair amount of avant garde music compared to the average person, but I am in no way qualified to say anything meaningful about this album as it relates to the avant garde. I can tell you that while The Crypt is AMM’s most influential recording, it’s also one of their most inaccessible (the first twenty minutes are especially challenging). It unsettles my generally musically open-minded animals to the point where they flee the room, even when I’m listening on headphones. And I can also tell you that, like “First Version/Take 2,” it does things to my head — as its creators intended.7
There’s a lot more that I’m tempted to write about the experience of deep listening to The Crypt. But writing about music is about as useful as tap dancing about poetry. So instead, I’ll get back to researching Part Two and leave you with Canadian music critic Stuart Broomer’s advice — “AMM deserves hearing in inverse proportion to which it can be talked about successfully.”8
And seriously, please do be mindful of listening to it around your pets. It’s likely to cause them some distress.
Until next week.
Peace, love, and strawberry fields,
Faith ☮️
PS — Housekeeping stuff.
You probably noticed the new format for the News page. Much better, yeah?
Now that we’ve shifted to this format, weekly updates beginning next week will post at the traditional time: Monday, 7:57 am (US east coast).
I'm obviously still working on the thumbnails, but in case you’ve ever wondered, the placeholder thumbnail (which is also the main image for The Abbey) is the arched ceiling and windows of St. Peter’s Church Hall, where John and Paul met. Also, the avant garde (ish) Rabbit Hole thumbnail was custom-drawn by Susan Montgomery, the artist/creator of (among other things) Sketchy Cats.
Also, some of these updates are turning out to be a bit more substantive than I’d planned. So taking a cue from Paul’s much-appreciated “this month on social media” emails, I”m working on putting together a monthly digest that combines every post for the month into a single email. If you’re already subscribed, you’ll automatically get that monthly digest in your inbox. If you’re not subscribed and would like to get those emails so you don’t need to keep checking the website for updates, here y’go—
Barry Miles, London Calling, Atlantic Press, 2010.
Even if you’re not generally an admirer of avant garde music, you will probably appreciate the first two tracks on Liverpool Sound Collage — “Peter Blake 2000” and “Plastic Beetle,” both of which include samples of Beatles studio chatter. Here's “Plastic Beetle” —
https://noisenotmusic.com/2018/01/24/a-quick-summary-of-amm/
https://web.archive.org/web/20050418111531/http://stylusmagazine.com/feature.php?ID=334
https://www.pointofdeparture.org/PoD52/PoD52Ezz-thetics.html
The Super Deluxe White Album edit of “First Version/Take 2” has been, for the past two years, my most-listened-to track on Spotify Wrapped. At nearly thirteen minutes in length, that tells you how often it fills my ears. It’s always an intentional listen, always late at night, and its effect on me has never diminished — I hear something new in it every single time. I’m beginning to harbour a suspicion that it might be their true masterwork. Someday I will write a full formal Abbey piece on this situation, when I’ve sorted it out for myself.
AMM remained an active group (with a shifting line-up) all the way up till 2022. Their later work is somewhat more accessible. Most of their work is unavailable on Spotify, but the hour-long track “Unholy Elizabeth” is much easier on the ears and more meditative. It still unsettles my cats, but not nearly as much as The Crypt does.
https://www.pointofdeparture.org/PoD52/PoD52Ezz-thetics.html
