amp studo: uncertainty principles

Uncertainty Principles is the new Amp Studio album, the solo project of Richard Amp of A.M.P.. As the album's name suggests, it is an homage to the beauty that can manifest itself when random or complex processes are allowed to flow in the production and creation of musical or visual works. Serendipity and random or pseudo random events have been integral to the making of this record. The sleeve artwork has also been created using processes that produce coincidental imagery. It was an "out of the blue" request for a copy of the track "Tiller" that led to the formation of this album. The act of finding and locating the master for this track, lead Richard to the realization that there were sounds and tracks in the archive, "Tiller", "Slip", "Misstype Dolittle" and "Sleep City Drone" that deserved re-evaluation and an opportunity for a new lease of life. He set about working on new material, using sounds and field recordings, both new and re-discovered, mixing the new and remixing the once forgotten. The album traverses terrains of intersections and juxtapositions from the shorelines of "Sliptwo" to the event horizon perceived in "Photon Sphere". Spiral deconstructions and city noise chaos combine to create the expressionist drone of "Spinfactors" and the lo-fi rap of "Sleep City Drone". The combinations of the sound effects of a typewriter, used as percussion, analogue synth sweeps, and washed out distorted drone sonic guitar on "Misstype Dolittle" is signature Richard Amp in his Amp Studio guise. We drift though 'Slip' almost as an interlude before the full randomality speaks in "Mort Irritées", an homage to music-concrete and the work of Pierre Henry. "Tiller" concludes CD 1 like a blissful balm, steering us outward towards some distant horizon, piano echoes calling the imagination to float free in a minimal sea. A chance invitation to perform in Bethnal Green, East London resulted in the making of "Uncertainly Alive", a transcript version of the performance, which forms the core of CD 2.