Eddie Prévost

As a founding member of the British improvising collective AMM (with composer/improviser Cornelius Cardew, Guitar vivisectionist Keith Rowe and others) Eddie Prévost helped define a new improvising ethos closer to contemporary European "art" forms than to anything ever "filed under jazz" before or after. AMM was also the rare band to actually perform the political resonances of freedom in music, without ever descending into the catacombs of illustrative populism. Though their music generally remained Britain's best-kept secret, their influence on a generation or two of improvising, rock, pop and noise musicians is incalculable. Eddie Prévost has also bravely endeavoured to capture the AMM aesthetic (and much more) in the language of words. Lectures, articles and workshops are just other ways of making music happen. His book of essays No Sound Is Innocent must be the closest anyone has ever come to pinning down in words what Prévost refers to as "meta-music".

But master drummer Eddie Prévost hasn't renounced the bourgeois pleasures of swing either. Duets recorded in the nineties with Marilyn Crispell and Evan Parker (and mercifully released on his own Matchless label) should instantly dispel any noises about free music being either "cerebral" or "confused".

Eddie Prévost also leads his own ensembles and participates in a variety of collective efforts including Supersession, Resoundings, the Free Jazz Quartet, Masters of Disorientation and, London Musicians' Collective.