Matchless Recordings

Run by percusionist Eddie Prévost, Matchless contains contemporary and classic free jazz, improvisation and noise.


Apogee chronicles both a first-time meeting of AMM and MEV (Musica Eletronnica Viva), and one of the last performances of that longest-running version of AMM. apogee 1, 2 and 3 are studio recordings of the two groups together; the second pairs performances by each individual group: a thirty-nine-minute piece by AMM entitled 01.05.04, and a thirty-six-minute piece by MEV, also entitled 01.05.04 (perhaps mere date, but also May Day), both recorded at London's Freedom of the City Festival. MEV includes Alvin Curran, Frederic Rzewski, and Richard Teitelbaum. “AMM and MEV go back together almost as far as AMM itself. In 1969 or so, Earl Brown released an LP on Mainstream Records called Live Electronic Music Improvised which had AMM on one side and MEV on the other. It was a great and forward looking idea, but unfortunately the labels (on MOST but not ALL copies) somehow got reversed. That, if nothing else, tied us together for decades." - Richard Teitelbaum --- John Tilbury / pianoKeith Rowe / guitar & electronicsEddie Prévost / percussionAlvin Curran / electronicsFrederic Rzewski / pianoRichard Teitelbaum / keyboard --- 'apogee' 1, 2 and 3 recorded at Gateway Studios, Kingston-upon-Thames, Surrey, England on 30th April 2004. '01.05.04' were recorded at Freedom of the City festival, Conway Hall, London on 1st May 2004 by Sebastian Lexer. Artwork designed by Ian Walters.  To buy the physical CD, head to to Eddie Prévost's CD store, Matchless Recordings.

Amm & Mev – apogee

"Rooms talk to me. I send out a sound, the space answers. The first message I picked up from the old barn in Umbria was "yes." Christian Wolff and I had been thinking, speaking about, even planning a CD with his solo percussion pieces since the premiere of the Dances in 1998. From that time I've been looking, waiting, hoping for the room that would say "yes." Here we are.  Christian Wolff does not compose percussion music. His percussion pieces are about as far away from the usual percussion techniques as I have travelled. If pressed to describe his music, I start by stating that I have never heard anything like it. It is virtuosic - though not about virtuosity. It's appearance - often - deceptively simple - always concisely constructed. Christian Wolff invites us on a magical journey through his world. A world where music we never imagined before exists. This is one of the spaces John Cage was talking about when he asked us to "let sounds be sounds". So they are. And there is so much music to be discovered there." - Robin Schulkowsky.  "Writing for percussion I've found is, more than for any other instrument, an experimental business. The music as I write it is, far more than usual, material out of which the player makes a music that is as much her own as the composer's, a kind of trusting conversation whose exchange and flow is what I like and whose sound may in this way be just itself as well." - Christian Wolff. --- Christian Wolff / composition, melodicaRobin Schulkowsky / percussion  --- Recorded at Poggiolo fram, Pozzuolo, Umbria, Italy on April 22-24 2003 by Adrian von Ripka. Cover by Tristram Wolff

Wolff / Schulkowsky – Percussionist Songs