WMWM - Live At The BBC 1973
The year 1973 was decisive in Robert Wyatt’s career, more and more attracted by the vocal and taking a distance with the more experimental aspect of the prog, he was already thinking about a solo career when the accident of June 1st which will let him paraplegic rush things. However it is during the first semester of this same year that WMWM was born whose music is exclusively improvised and almost totally instrumental. Apparently this group sounds like a contradiction to the trajectory that Wyatt's career already seemed to take, but in fact we must understand this group as a sort of carelessness, as some moments of the prog have been some years before. If the accident of Robert Wyatt marks the end of an era, the last act of a period of recklessness that will this time have tragic consequences, this accident is probably not the cause of the short existence of this group. Without the fatal date of June 1, WMWM was in any case not promised to have a future as the musical differences seem obvious, especially between Gary Windo and Dave McRae. Yet it's with both that Wyatt wanted to play and this is what makes the group's interest: Windo crazy and uncontrollable, Mc Rae significantly more structured and reinforced in this posture by Ron Mathewson very inventive and sublime . Wyatt meanwhile is a bit like in "The End Of A Ear" alternating construction and demolition of the rhythm.
This post was made possible with the contribution of Propylaen2001 who provided almost all the recording of the performance given for the BBC apparently on April 4, 1973. I added the end that was missing and the first note of the saxophone in the beginning.
There is an improvisation in two parts to which I did not give titles because a complete confusion reigns around the titles of the two parts. First named "Caramus" and "Spiderman", their order appears as such on the album "Anglo American" by Gary Windo which contains edit of the performance, but the two parts have been reversed. On the version provided by Propylaen2001, the first part of the improvisation is named "Toddler" and the second "Caramus".
If you compare the second part of this recording with the version available on the album "Anglo American" you will find that the pitch of this version is a little higher. In fact for reasons of space the officially released version has not only been edited but also accelerated but that it does not get the pitch has been lowered. I preferred to leave the pitch of this version as it is because it is consistent with the first part.
There is another recording from this band where Mathewson is replaced by Richard Sinclair, of course I recommend it.
Obviously the band have also done one concert in trio without Gary Windo
-Robert: Drums, Organ, Voice, echoplex
-Ron: bass
-Dave: piano, electric piano
-Gary: tenor saxophone