Keith Rowe (Great Britain)

Improvisation, noise, novel music

Keith Rowe, British artist and guitarist from AMM, is one of the most active and energetically endowed modern musicians. Though he is well over 60, he records tons of music permanently participating in international festivals, one of them, AMPLIFY, being patronized by him together with John and changing venues every year. Keith Rowe, a man of firm principle, has devoted himself mainly to one thing -- to cultivate a special position of AMM as of cultural phenomenon without prejudices and repertoire but with strict and consistent guideline.

Keith Row has rejected repertoire, technique, artistic taste, author's hand and all the rest things that have to do with individualism in arts. Within long years he strived for eliminating consumer aspect in music graphics. It means that there is nothing to catch hold of in his works, his creations can't be characterized straight by the way they "sound" -- they are between the lines or simply lack. In other words, Rowe's interest has, one and for all, transformed from esthetic to ideological one. For all this, he insists on the necessity of individual approach -- an artist ought to be a full-sufficient and stand-out unit and never stop at the stuff found. To obtain reputation of a stable person you have to change yourself every single moment. Since definite moment of time he ceased to tune his guitak focusing on its non-guitar properties. Now his working methods are beyond enumeration, but are they of any interes? Of substantial interest is the fact that these strategies becomes a product of continuous search and long history which, on one hand is based on the principles of strict limitations and, on the other, exposes alive, curious and open mind standing behind. AMM exerted fundamental influence upon the flow of events in vanguard. In 1960-70 the collective evolved by means of philosophic and political doctrines and views: Zen, Daoism, Maoism, pop-art… AMM arised as a complex, complicated phenomenon absorbing a plenty of ideologies and concepts, elucidated its own underlying ideological system/basis (by the way, nobody except AMM knows what "AMM" means). This system hosts so called "new music" (Neue Musik), but it's only a single verge of their general philosophy. As known, for example, AMM always considered themselves as some interaction of four elements: three participants of the collective and the group as an independent element.

They were, in fact, the first improvisers whose music sourced from independent and free of each other sounds sound layers; they were one of the first to use silence and musical varieties of the "found objects" (object trouve) -- for example, radio simply switched on in the course of performance, forcing the total collective to reconcile with it, to launch something, to learn to interact (remember, in this connection, Marcielle Duchan's pissouirre, or a bike wheel).

Keith Rowe, John Tilbery and Cornelius Cardew were communists, the group performed its rapidamente due to their political positions. Any new idea was transformed through the prism of the collective view, it took a new form and affected music. This principle works nowdays: whereas attention of the most electro-acoustic projects is focused upon sound parameters and performance, all survived AMM-members (Cornelius Cardew perished in 1981) proceed their work under the influence of ideologies, ideas concepts produced as far back as in the middle of the previous century. John Tilbery to this very day adheres to extremely left beliefs and boycotts America claiming that he'll never set foot in there.

Keith Rowe haven't got any musical education, instead he is a professional artist. Perhaps, therefore, his musical ideas are so "non-musical" and so "artistic" in the broad sense. Here is an indicative passage from his interview (on-line magazine "Paris Transatlantic"): "What is my actual Self? What I need to express? I've been reflecting on this issue about eight years long, permanently turning over to what could it be, and suddenly I caught it. Look at the American painting school, extremely provincial in the XIX century. They really longed for something original but they simply had no idea about "how". The clue was to get rid of the European painting traditions. But what has to be sacrificed, how to fulfill it? And Jackson Pollock did it. He simply rejected technique. How could I reject technique? Simply by laying down my guitar on the table in front of me! Changing by this the angle of perception: from the outer to "up-down…"