The Masthead

Born in the early 1960s to libertarian parents who fully subscribed to the fevered freedom-dreams of the times, a friend of mine recalls the only parental guidance he ever got from his father: “Never do what I tell you.” 40 years on he’s still struggling with that one, his lips tightening in anger and consternation at the memory of his boy-child mind spinning in an evertightening ball of confusion out of his desperation to crack the koan and please his dad, dimly aware that to obey him would be to disobey him, and vice versa. He was still looking for resolution to the riddle when his father walked out on the family. Yet when he came of age in the late 1970s, he went underground himself, participating in Industrial music’s early subversions of art and performance as a means of generating media controversies to reach a wider audience. He soon resurfaced for air and crossed over into more legit work in film. His Industrial underground experiences haven’t altered his highly jaundiced view of 1960s counterculture pressuring the collapse of England’s class based social hierarchies and helping to usher in a more democratic era, where anyone can shout loud and long enough to make their voices heard, regardless of accent or accident of birth. Remembering the boy ordered by his father to disobey all rules, he’ll always be suspicious of that decade’s egalitarian aims.

The unanswerable riddle that permanently damaged my friend’s trust in the libertarian will to freedom recurs as a mantra silently chanted throughout this issue’s feature on Eddie Prévost’s improvisation workshop. Philip Clark’s philosophical essay, mixed with reportage, asks whether one person can lead another to freedom without the door slamming shut the moment the teacher raises his finger to point the way. Eddie Prévost has been struggling to resolve the riddle from the opposite angle. He has spent 50

years searching for the political and philosophical meaning of freedom in music, through the ongoing improvisations of AMM, looking for it in the spaces opened up in the performance of a graphic score by Cornelius Cardew, or through ad hoc combinations of free jazz players and improvisors. AMM’s enemies repeatedly declare there’s no freedom left in AMM music, when all AMM improvisations are always immediately identifiable as AMM. The same enemies dismiss his workshop as Eddie’s attempt to turn AMM into a quasi-religious cult. Well, if it is a cult, it hasn’t got a name or a leader. And it’s governed by the principal rule that you just can’t teach people how to play free.

From the start, Philip says he’s there out of desperation to find a way up from the bottomless pit he fell into when he couldn’t for the life of him remember why he was a composer. In that moment, the walls of knowledge raised around a life devoted to learning everything about music to realise his ambitions vaporised into nothing. The crisis cut deep into his sense of self, leaving him feeling worthless, adrift from the circle of friends established through composing and performing his works, while carrying on a second life writing about music for The Wire and other publications. Though he continued to engage with music in the act of writing about it, his crisis effectively destroyed his public life as a composer, his ego constantly gratified by the musicians looking up to him as they performed his music, followed by the audience’s applause.

None of this meant a thing once he’d entered the workshop. His life in music was effectively over; by participating in the workshop he slowly unlearnt everything he knew about music and found his way back to sound. Chris Bohn

Distribution

News stands

UK, Europe & Rest of World (excl USA) COMAG Specialist Division Tavistock Works, Tavistock Road West Drayton, Middlesex UB7 7QX Tel +44 (0)1895 433800 mark.foker@comag.co.uk

USA IPD (Source Interlink Fulfillment Div) 27500 Riverview Center Blvd Suite 400, Bonita Springs, FL 34134 Tel 239 949 4450 rsonnenberg@ucsinc.com

Bookshops

Worldwide Central Books (Magazine Dept) 99 Wallis Road, London E9 5LN Tel +44 (0)20 8986 4854 sasha@centralbooks.com

Independent record shops

UK & Europe Shellshock, 23A Collingwood Road London N15 4EL Tel +44 (0)20 8800 8110 Fax +44 (0)20 8800 8140 info@shellshock.co.uk

USA Forced Exposure 219 Medford St Malden, MA 02148-7301 Fax 781 321 0321 fe@forcedexposure.com

Rest of World Contact The Wire direct Tel +44 (0)20 7422 5022 Fax +44 (0)20 7422 5011 subs@thewire.co.uk

NB The Wire can also supply record shops in Europe direct

4 | The Wire | Masthead

Subscriptions

Print Subscription

12 issues UK £40 Europe £56 USA/Canada US$90/£56 Rest of the World (Air) £66

Digital Subscription

12 months Worldwide £30

See page 104 for details or go to thewire.co.uk/subscribe

The Wire is published 12 times a year by The Wire Magazine Ltd. Printed by Wyndeham Heron Ltd.

The Wire was founded in 1982 by Anthony Wood. Between 1984–2000 it was part of Naim Attallah’s Namara Group. In December 2000 it was purchased in a management buy-out by the magazine’s staff. It continues to publish as a 100 per cent independent operation.

The views expressed in The Wire are those of the respective contributors and are not necessarily shared by the magazine or its staff. The Wire assumes no responsibility for unsolicited manuscripts, photographs, illustrations or promotional items. Copyright in the UK and abroad is held by the publisher or by freelance contributors. Unauthorised reproduction of any item is forbidden.

Issue 339 May 2012 £4 ISSN 0952-0680

The Wire 23 Jack’s Place, 6 Corbet Place, London E1 6NN, UK Tel +44 (0)20 7422 5010 Fax +44 (0)20 7422 5011 thewire.co.uk

Publisher & Editor-in-Chief Tony Herrington tony@thewire.co.uk

Editor Chris Bohn chris@thewire.co.uk Deputy Editors Frances Morgan frances@thewire.co.uk Derek Walmsley derek@thewire.co.uk Contributing Editors Anne Hilde Neset anne@thewire.co.uk Rob Young rob@thewire.co.uk

Art Direction & Design Ben Weaver art@thewire.co.uk Design Patrick Ward patrick@thewire.co.uk

Advertising Manager Andy Tait andy@thewire.co.uk Licensing Manager & Advertising Sales Shane Woolman shane@thewire.co.uk Subscriptions, Circulation & Accounts Ben House ben@thewire.co.uk Subscriptions Daisy Hyde daisy@thewire.co.uk

Online Editor Jennifer Lucy Allan jennifer@thewire.co.uk Online & Cross Platform Editor Nathan Budzinski nathan@thewire.co.uk Assistant Online Editors Katie Gibbons katie@thewire.co.uk Sophia Ignatidou sophia@thewire.co.uk Online Development Dorian Fraser Moore dorian@thewire.co.uk

Archivist Edwin Pouncey edwin@thewire.co.uk

Words Steve Barker, Mike Barnes, Dan Barrow, Clive Bell, Marcus Boon, Michael Bracewell, Britt Brown, Nick Cain, Philip Clark, Byron Coley, Julian Cowley, Alan Cummings, Sam Davies, Brian Dillon, Phil England, Kodwo Eshun, Mark Fisher, Phil Freeman, Louise Gray, Andy Hamilton, Adam Harper, Jim Haynes, Richard Henderson, Ken Hollings, Robin Howells, Hua Hsu, William Hutson, David Keenan, Rahma Khazam, Biba Kopf, Tim Lawrence, Alan Licht, Dave Mandl, Marc Masters, Bill Meyer, Keith Moliné, Will Montgomery, Brian Morton, Joe Muggs, Alex Neilson, Andrew Nosnitsky, Ian Penman, Richard Pinnell, Edwin Pouncey, Nina Power, Simon Reynolds, Nick Richardson, Bruce Russell, Peter Shapiro, Chris Sharp, Philip Sherburne, Nick Southgate, Daniel Spicer, Joseph Stannard, David Stubbs, Dave Tompkins, David Toop, Dan Warburton, Val Wilmer, Barry Witherden, Matt Wuethrich

Images Thomas Adank, Jon Baker, Dusdin Condren, Mauro D’Agati, Tara Darby, Jonathan de Villiers, Glen Erler, Jason Evans, Jason Fulford, Luke Gilford, Leonie Hampton, Brad Harris, Jamie Hawkesworth, Pieter Hugo, Jak Kilby, Heinz Peter Knes, Benjamin McMahon, Tom Medwell, Jason Nocito, Fergus Padel, Cristobal Palma, Shawn Records, Savage Pencil, Jaap Scheeren, Michael Schmelling, Bryan Sheffield, Ben Stockley, Chris Verene, Eva Vermandel, Kai von Rabenau, Jake Walters, Jeremy & Claire Weiss, Val Wilmer