Other Voices

Keith Rowe at the AMPLIFY 2008: light Festival

It is no longer thought that determines the object […] but rather the object that seizes thought and forces it to think it, or better, according to it.¹

I. Keith Rowe

Active for decades within the domain of non-idiomatic free improvisation, Keith Rowe is an English guitarist and founding member of the seminal free-improvisation ensemble AMM. Among its founding members, which included tenor saxophonist Lou Gare, percussionist Eddie Prévost, and bassist Lawrence Sheaff, who were later joined by composers Cornelius Cardew and Christopher Hobbs, musical backgrounds bridged both jazz and post-serial composition, most notably with composers John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen (with whom Cardew had worked).² The membership of AMM was stabilized into its “classic” trio formation, including Prévost and Rowe, upon the arrival of pianist John Tilbury in 1980; Rowe departed from the group in 2004.

Figure 1: AMM c. 1968. Source: Frazer Pearce.

In contrast to chamber music and jazz ensembles of the time—as well as both American and European free jazz groups—which were based on a performance of music (and a certain repertoire of music) where sounds are generally conceived first (by either the composer or the performing musician) and then (re-)produced in performance, AMM was instead “based on a philosophy [of] searching for the sound in the performance.”³ Moreover, AMM distinguished itself from other groups by maintaining a leaderless existence, which perhaps may be attributed to the varying degrees of leftist political affiliation demonstrated among its members.⁴ When asked by critic Dan Warburton about the formation of AMM, Rowe remarked that the intention of AMM’s founding members — strikingly similar to the collective objective of the musicians belonging to Onkyô scene in Japan (with whom Rowe has often collaborated) — was to “invent a music that would be ours — AMM music. Music that would fit into no category. We were outside the scene of improvised music.”⁵

The sonic landscape traversed by AMM spans what Cage designated as “the entire field of sound.”⁶ As such, the musico-philosophical foundation of AMM music may be closely aligned with the orientation of composer Edgard Varèse, who, anticipating electronic music in the 1920s, proclaimed his work to be “organized sound,” and himself not a musician, but “a worker in rhythms, frequencies, and intensities.”⁷ Varèse described the sonic matter with which he composed as being comprised of material forces, and the use of new instruments as providing the ability to present “the movement of sound-masses, of shifting planes.”⁸ Predating the aforementioned Onkyô scene, AMM music embraced the investigation and organization of flows of sound over extended durations, multiple strata of overlapping sonic activity explored patiently within self-generating structures.⁹ This committment often necessitated unconventional approaches to playing (or activating) instruments, which primarily included electric guitar (Rowe), percussion (Prévost), and piano (John Tilbury).

Look at the American school of painting, which was very provincial in the 1800s: they really wanted to do something original but didn’t know how to do it, the clue was to get rid of European painting, but how could they ditch European painting, what did they have to do to do that? And Jackson Pollock did it — he just abandoned the technique. How could I abandon the technique? Lay the guitar flat! All that it’s doing is angling the body [of the guitar] from facing outwards to facing upwards — the strings remain horizontal, the strings are the same.¹⁰

Figure 2. Setup used by Keith Rowe for AMPLIFY 2008: light Festival performance. Source: Yuko Zama.

Renowned for his unconventional “tabletop guitar” playing style wherein the guitar is set flat upon (and parallel to) the tabletop, Rowe’s meta-instrument (echoing the “amplified piano” developed by David Tudor for performing John Cage’s Variations II) constitutes an electro-acoustic network within which the electric guitar forms a central node through which every sound made in performance is amplified or processed (see Figure 2). Importantly for Rowe, all signals are passed through the guitar pickups, so that they become “part of the guitar.”¹¹ In addition to the six-stringed centerpiece of this assemblage, Rowe employs an arsenal of additional sound sources (e.g., various microphones, a handheld battery-powered fan, an iPod for audio playback, and a shortwave radio; preparations (e.g., credit cards, a knife, metal spring, plastic lid, and stones), and signal processing units (providing, for instance, equalization or filtering, distortion, pitch shifting, and audio looping), a collection that has evolved over time. Inspired by American abstract expressionist painter Jackson Pollock, who placed his canvases flat on the floor of his studio, Rowe outright eschewed standard guitar technique, achieving a similarly “all-over approach” (or compositional perspective) in terms of sonic exploration.¹² Critic Philip Clark described Rowe in performance as maintaining the appearance of “forensically conducting an autopsy on the death of conventional technique.”¹³ Craft, which for generations has contributed toward the definition of exceptional playing ability, no longer constitutes a concern for Rowe — for instance, he very rarely uses his fingers to fret notes: “I try to strip the music of all of the craft elements.”¹⁴

The co-existence of various agencies found within Rowe’s practice is best described by composer Timothy McCormack, who in his notes on instrumental mechanism and performer-instrument physicality suggests that the body (of the performing musician) and the instrument exist together as “autonomous operators comprising a larger machine within which they mutually exert an influence over the other.”¹⁵ He argues that this relationship has “led to a reversal in the hierarchy between form and content.”¹⁵ Drawing upon the terms of contemporary, non-anthropocentric materialism, architect Alisa Andrasek has also elaborated upon this kind of creative transformation. For Rowe, we may substitute “design” and “designer” for “music” and “musician” in the following passage:

It is not simply the design process, but also the causal role of the designer that has changed. The designer’s position in the chain of causality and its ontological status as the source of creativity is no longer fixed but is subject to constant renegotiation.¹⁷

II. AMPLIFY 2008: light

On September 20th, 2008, as part of the AMPLIFY 2008: light Festival organized by Jon Abbey and hosted at Kid Ailack Art Hall in Tokyo, Keith Rowe performed a rare solo set — his first ever in Japan — lasting just over 35 minutes in duration.¹⁸ On December 8th, 2008, Erstwhile Records released a recording of the performance as ErstLive 007, and in response to considerable discussion of the performance (and the subsequent album release) within music publications, but mostly on Internet forums, Rowe posted a detailed entry about the performance on the Erstwhile Records-related blog Erstwords, expounding upon the process by which the performance was constructed.¹⁹

Figure 2: Jackson Pollock, Number 11, 1952 (“Blue Poles”).Source: National Gallery of Australia.

In the post, Rowe explains that his primary formal inspiration was the work Number 11, 1952 (“Blue Poles”) by the aforementioned painter Jackson Pollock.²⁰ The painting, done in enamel and aluminum paint with glass on canvas, features eight vertical “poles” presented in a row along the canvas (see Figure 3). Accordingly, Rowe selected four (rather than eight) “Cultural Templates” (or “poles”) to be played back during the performance, excerpts of existing recorded music by Baroque composers. Alongside each template, Rowe performed. In order of appearance, the four pieces used as templates are as follows: Concerto for Oboe and Strings in D Minor (1716) by Alessandro Marcello; Dominus regnavit decorum (Psalm 92) (1734) from grands motets by Jean-Joseph de Mondonville; “Tristes apprêts” from Castor et Pollux (1737) by Jean-Philippe Rameau; and “When I am laid in earth” (or “Dido’s Lament”) from Dido and Aeneas(1689) by Henry Purcell. The way in which the templates are incorporated into Rowe’s solo performance marks a noteworthy development in his longstanding use of pre-recorded music within a live performance. He has commented on his past use of tapes:

At the very first sessions of AMM I used pre-recorded tapes of Beach Boys, things like that, played enormously loud. It was our version of the ‘sheets of sound.’ We would play it as loud as we possibly could and try to climb over it like a wall. […] Later, I only ever used pre-recorded tapes at periods of disruption in the group’s development.²¹

However, during the AMPLIFY 2008: light Festival performance, the excerpts from existing recordings of Baroque music were played back unmodified — that is, without any kind of alteration or processing beyond being passed through the circuitry of the guitar and the mixer (and ultimately through a Fender Twin amplifier). Moreover, the playback of the recordings was executed at a moderate volume, certainly constituting neither a striking disruption in dynamics nor a “sheet of sound” as was common in earlier instances of his using pre-recorded tapes.

Figure 3. Keith Rowe during his AMPLIFY 2008: light Festival performance. Source: Yuko Zama.

Throughout the blog entry, Rowe describes in detail the historical context of—and conditions for—the performance, including his own background, his artistic concerns, and the ways in which each of the chosen templates relate to both his general artistic practice and the specific solo performance that took place as part of the festival. He discusses concepts and themes provided by the content of the templates themselves, such as “the artist in society,” “point and line,” the development of continuo playing and the corresponding role taken by Rowe as basso continuo in both AMM and later collaborations with Onkyô musicians (as a layer of sustained electro-acoustic sound), “solo and accompaniment,” and “the sensitivity of touch,” among others, and questions that were of central importance when developing his approach to the solo performance, including those regarding “profundity in the digital age” and the relationship between contemporary works and those of the past.²¹ Rowe explicates his selection of templates:

Thinking about the forthcoming solo, I felt the need to somehow make clear ‘who I was’: what my background is, what are my concerns? Something about my interest, the music I love, the sounds that have influenced me. […] For almost half of the solo’s duration, I utilize long sections of pre-recorded classical music unprocessed, unaltered, and presented as it is, I considered this a break from the normal expectations.²³

It is through this particular utilization of the templates that Rowe departs from not only past solo performances, but also from his typical basso continuo role in ensemble performance where, much like his Onkyô colleagues, he focuses on the contribution of occasional, continuous layers of sustained electro-acoustic drone. Instead, the long sections of pre-recorded music provide a kind of continuo layer while Rowe mostly contributes various gestures, themes, and pointillist interjections. Intriguingly, Rowe revisits the work of his own musical past, excavating and incorporating playing techniques and materials that he had abandoned, including the use of clear plastic lids from the mid-1960s, bowing the guitar strings [also from the 1960s], and a steel pan scrubber from the early 1980s.

Rowe emphasizes a semantic analysis of his own performance — that is, what his performance means to himself as an artist, the setting of the festival, the specific templates used, and so on. In fact, this appears to comprise the primary concern of the discussion. However, and perhaps to the dismay of Rowe himself, what instead demands greater attention is that which actually takes place sonically during the performance, and, crucially, the experimental methodology employed by the artist: an improvisation that takes place alongside existing musical material. From this perspective it is understood that with regard to the festival performance, Rowe is not exactly concerned with the interpretation of his templates, although what they mean to him is significant on some level — it is obvious that careful consideration was given to their being chosen and utilized. However, this importance is not quite made audibly explicit on the released concert recording. Rowe forgoes any direct interaction with the material, and he avoids any kind of postmodernist synthesis — for instance, where the pre-recorded material would have been transformed, cut-up, manipulated, or used to create a mashup (of two or more overlapping musics). Instead, Rowe appears to re-enact the conceptual language of Baroque music, and, in doing so, it becomes “cloned” (or, alternatively, “sampled”) as part of his own methodology.

Mostly I imagined in my mind’s eye that the significant points suggested by the templates were on transparent sheets. I would conceive that the sheets were laminated on top of each other, perhaps combine all the significances and concepts as one solid mass. Another possibility is to dart around in rapid succession from point to concept to significance to idea in a blizzard of thoughts, or simply remaining on one solitary notion.²⁴

III. An Other Voice

Rowe’s contributions constitute an uncanny, heterophonic voice that is performed alongside not a central melody, but each template.²⁵ The performance reformulates a centuries-old music theoretical notion describing texture into a creative methodology rooted in an experimental orientation that considers its objects or material in excess of both sensory-based and semantic relations to them. One might easily imagine Rowe — or another musician — performing non-idiomatically alongside any music whatsoever.²⁶ His performance does not constitute a version of the pre-recorded music nor is it a negation. If regarded as a unique, if atypical, musicology, it exists without the traditional virtues of musicological thought — for example, analysis, argument, critique. As such, Rowe’s performance engenders a radically non-standard orientation, and it may be understood as comprising a kind of fiction: an other voice. It is not a representation, but a new experience of Baroque music—an immanent, performative ventriloquism operating in accordance with the musical works that serve as objects of investigation throughout the performance.

This essay was originally written in 2013 as part of an ongoing series. See also Other Voices: Kanye West on Later… with Jools Holland.

1. Ray Brassier, Nihil Unbound: Enlightenment and Extinction (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 149.
2. Notably, throughout the years AMM has performed with several guests, including New York School composer and guitarist Christian Wolff, saxophonist Evan Parker, and Arditti Quartet cellist Rohan de Saram.
3. Keith Rowe, “Keith Rowe,” interview by Dan Warburton, Paris Transatlantic, January 2001. For aesthetico-theoretical concerns of AMM, see Edwin Prévost, No Sound Is Innocent: AMM and the Practice of Self-Invention: Meta-Musical Narratives: Essays (Essex: Copula, 1995), and for the early history of AMM, see Michael Nyman, Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond, 2nd ed., (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 126–29; for a more comprehensive history, see Philip Clark, “The Primer: AMM,” The Wire, no. 271 (September 2006), 42–49.
4. Rowe, however, has noted that the politics of AMM is expressed sonically “within the counterpoint.” See Rowe, “Interview: Keith Rowe,” interview by Josh Ronsen, monk mink pink punk, no. 12 (July 2007).
5. See note 2 above.
6. John Cage, “The Future of Music: Credo,” Silence: Lectures and Writings (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1961), 4.
7. Edgard Varèse, “The Liberation of Sound,” in Audio Culture: Readings in Modern Music, ed. Christoph Cox and Daniel Warner (New York: Continuum, 2004), 20.
8. Ibid., 17.
9. Of course, this is reminiscent of the music of New York School composer Morton Feldman. AMM pianist John Tilbury is one of the foremost interpreters of Feldman’s music, and his writing about the experience relates closely with his performing with the former. See Tilbury, “On Playing Feldman,”Morton Feldman Page.
10. See note 2 above.
11. Ibid.
12. It is worth noting that Rowe initially trained as a painter.
13. Philip Clark, “The Primer: AMM,” The Wire, no. 271 (September 2006), 42.
14. See note 3 above.
15. Timothy McCormack, “Instrumental Mechanism and Physicality as Compositional Resources” (master’s thesis, University of Huddersfield, 2010), 2.
16. Ibid.
17. Alisa Andrasek, “Dustism,” in Leper Creativity: Cyclonopedia Symposium, ed. Ed Keller, et al. (Brooklyn: Punctum Books, 2012), 74.
18. Solo performances, and especially solo album releases, are rare in Rowe’s history. See the releases Harsh, Guitar Solo (GROB, 2000) and The Room (Erstwhile Records, 2007).
19. See Keith Rowe, “EL007,” Erstwords, January 29, 2009.
20. In addition to Pollock, Rowe has drawn considerable inspiration from the work of other visual artists such as Mark Rothko, Caravaggio, and Cy Twombly, among others.
21. See note 2 above.
22. See note 18 above.
23. Ibid.
24. Ibid.
25. Importantly, the term “heterophony,” used musically to describe “the simultaneous variation of a single melody” (see Peter Cooke, “Heterophony,” Grove Music Online), may be translated into the “other voice” as it is derived from the Greek heteros (“other”) and phōnē (“voice”).
26. A similar performance occurs on the album Guitar, Drums ’n’ Bass (Avant, 1996) on which renowned guitarist Derek Bailey improvises — in his own way — alongside recordings of drum and bass music (as played by DJ Ninj).