AK Musick was a five-piece German collective assembled in Stuttgart by the jazz clarinettist and producer Hans Kumpf. The members – Angela Weber (vocals), Helmut Grab (piano, organ), Winfried Koch (flute, clarinet, various instruments) and Alfred Lell (cello) – all had a classical education. AK Musick performed live for the first time at the 1972 German Jazz Festival in Frankfurt am Main. On 14 November of the same year, they recorded their debut album at the famous Tonstudio Bauer in Ludwigsburg in just three hours, with technical support from ECM sound engineer Martin Wieland, who had previously worked with Keith Jarrett for the ECM label. Their radical and experimental music, apparently entirely improvised, with hints of free jazz was ambitious and innovative, way ahead of its time. They used over 20 different instruments, including such unusual ones as the kazoo, darbuka, wind machine, tam-tam, zither, ektare and jaw harp.

Even the minimal private pressing of just 150 copies of their home-made, eponymous 1972 album failed to sell. It was released as the first LP on Hans Kumpf’s own legendary independent label, AKM Records. Housed in handmade sleeves decorated with spray paint and accompanied by a 12-page A4-format booklet featuring liner notes by Helmut Lachenmann, this rare experimental jazz artefact is now extremely difficult to track down and, moreover, very expensive.