Bill Laswell

Psychonavigation is a trip and a half. Pete Namlook and Bill Laswell have created a set of sonic hallucinogens that permeate the psyche. These sequences and atmospheres are full of experimental sounds, strange samples, and overt space music riffs. There is nothing earthly about this music. The atmospheres are inhuman. The evocations are metallic and robotic. The flow, however, is smooth and fluid. Namlook and Laswell are visiting the ultimate oxymoron – fluid metal. The answers are as mysterious as quicksilver itself. This is one of the best Namlook/Laswell collaborations. It will appeal to fans of Amani, Tales, and Dweller at the Threshold. It is essential space music.

Zorn and Laswell have been friends and musical compatriots since they first met in 1978, and have been responsible for some of the most intense and memorable music in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Recorded in early 2021, near the end of the year’s pandemic lockdown, it marks the first time Zorn had touched the saxophone in over fifteen months. Laswell had spent most of the year locked in his apartment. Something special was happening that day—and after the session Laswell felt rejuvenated—as if all the toxins and poisons had left his body. Soulful and essential, The Cleansing is an historic meeting—and the first recorded duo project by these two Downtown magicians.

Version 2 Version: A Dub Transmission finds the veteran bassist/producer offering yet another dose of his intriguing neo-dub experimentation. Instead of giving an exact replica of grooves from dub's classic era, a 49-year-old Laswell combines dub with modern electronica and takes it to a trippy, hypnotic, atmospheric place - a place where the reggae beat interacts with ambient club/dance grooves. Version 2 Version doesn't cater to dub purists by any means; anyone who expects this 2004 release to sound exactly like King Tubby circa 1971 is bound to be disappointed. But then, anyone who is familiar with Laswell's history knows that expecting him to offer a carbon copy of old-school dubwise would be like expecting Ornette Coleman to play "Ornithology" exactly like Charlie "Bird" Parker played it in the late '40s…

Spirals , the slow reveal, cyclical but eventually coming to a point . ‘Realm of Spells ‘ is for me the point . Maybe the last time I will get to work with Bill. For me personally, this record embodies and contains a lot of the basic approach I had right from the beginning , especially in regard to playing the bass. The circumstances of our trip led to me using a Fender P bass for the first time in years. All the early PiL stuff plus Full circle with Holger and Jaki was played on Fender P. I was taken back to that beautiful naive beginning . At that juncture some pristine mathematical truth shot like a ray of vajra light from deep space.

Since the days of Cream and the Jimi Hendrix Experience, the guitar/bass/drums trio has been convened by visionary tone scientists as a laboratory for music of primal power and tonal subtlety. ON COMMON GROUND features three such players. Mike Sopko has explored the frontiers of the guitar with Los Lobos and Dosh, Thomas Pridgen. Laswell, like Sopko a Midwesterner, here transmutes the industrial crash and hum of the region into music of muscular authority. Even followers of the protean career of composer, instrumentalist and conceptualist Tyshawn Sorey might be surprised by the oceans of primal rhythm he conjures here. Together, the sounds brought into being by these 3 improvisors are at once grounded in a deep inquiry of traditions that span space and time while cracking open a window onto eternal radiance. This is fearless music, the kind that can only be made when master musicians meet ON COMMON GROUND.

Outer Dark displays Bill Laswell's penchant for working out compositional ideas at great length, breaking the 20-minute barrier on both of the album's instrumental pieces. Entirely a studio creation, the music is the result of Laswell's (sounds) collaboration with Robert Musso (engineering, treatments) at Brooklyn, NY's Greenpoint Studios. The duo attempts to shape a composition out of the dark ether on the opening "Chakra." It begins with a buzzing sitar drone (providing the Eastern flavor common in Laswell's music) and strummed guitar emerging from the murk. Disappearing and returning throughout, the elements take on a sort of dizzying paranoia at song's end through their repetition. As for the ether itself, the musical backdrop is a drift of throbbing, amorphous ambience comprised of mildly chilling keyboard washes and tube-like breezes…