Aikido instructor and free improv saxophonist Lou Gare, who died on 6 October, was the co-founder of AMM with guitarist Keith Rowe and drummer Eddie Prévost. He played with the group up until their 1973 album To Hear And Back Again, and then not again until The Nameless Uncarved Block on Matchless in 1990.

During the 1970s Gare moved to Devon where he continued to make music solo and with local musicians such as pianist Sam Richards in Synchronicity, which also featured David Stanley and Sarah Frances. The group performed throughout the 1990s and early 2000s in the Southwest, and they also toured the Czech Republic. In 2005 Gare released a solo album, No String Attached, and in March 2011 he played a two day residency at London Cafe Oto, when he played solo, with his band and former AMM colleague Eddie Prévost.

A keen martial arts student and teacher for over 20 years, Gare told Julian Cowley in The Wire 325, “In martial art you learn an enormous amount about how to direct your energy and conserve it, and about how to keep relaxed. That’s one of the things I love about the way I play saxophone. When I’m playing really well my whole body is very relaxed. I just watch it working, in a way.”