Chi cerca titoli vecchi e nuovi pubblicati negli anni dalla gloriosa
Matchless Recordings di Eddie Prévost ne trova le versioni in digitale presso il negozio virtuale del Cafe Oto londinese,
Otoroku. Per qualche esemplare, ormai raro, delle originali edizioni in cd o altro supporto fisico può provare a rivolgersi alla casa madre:
http://www.matchlessrecordings.com/shop
Scrive Nicola Negri per
Free Jazz Blog: "AMM – one of the first European ensembles entirely devoted to free improvised music – was founded in London in the early Sixties by percussionist Eddie Prévost, saxophone player Lou Gare and guitarist Keith Rowe, and was soon joined by bassist Lawrence Sheaff and especially composer, pianist and cellist Cornelius Cardew, whose rigorous ideas about music were essential in orienting the first developments of the ensemble. After their first record,
AMMMusic, was released in 1966 by the major label Elektra, the group couldn’t find any other company willing to record and release their music, unable to recognize any potential in the radical approach and ideas put forward by the ensemble.
An episode recounted by Prévost is indicative of the attitude and difficulties they were confronted with: “I remember having a discussion with one who, frankly, gave me a going over. Speaking about
The Crypt, he said, ‘why do you want to release this stuff? No one’s ever going to buy this - this is awful.’ We were taken aback, such a vehement response to the work you know. I said, ‘well, we didn't produce it for you to sell. We produced it because it was representative of our work and we thought it was an important part of it’.”
In the early Seventies Prévost then decided to create Matchless Recordings, at first as a mean to document AMM activities, taking a typical DIY approach: Rowe’s artwork adorned the cover of many of the releases, the musicians wrote the detailed liner notes themselves, and much of the production of the records happened in Prévost’s own house. After almost forty years of existence – and still active to this day – Matchless has become both an important catalogue of AMM performances (
The Crypt, first excerpted in a split release with MEV on the Mainstream Records series curated by Earle Brown, was finally released in its entirety as a double LP by Matchless in 1981), and the opportunity for new improvisers to have their music released.
In late 2016 London’s Cafe Oto worked with Eddie Prévost to offer digital recordings of the Matchless catalogue, for the first time, through their own Otoroku label’s website, thus offering new possibilities for this musics to reach adventurous listeners anywhere."
https://www.cafeoto.co.uk/shop/category/matchless-recordings
