Laswell got his earliest professional experience as a bassist with funk groups in and around Detroit, Michigan as well as Ann Arbor. Though starting out as a guitar player, he soon switched to bass. Though some artists have chaffed against Laswell's distinctive recording and production style - most noticeably some of his for hire production gigs like Motörhead, Swans and White Zombie - many other collaborations, such as with pianist Herbie Hancock and singer Iggy Pop have been lengthier and recurring. Similarly, most versions of Praxis have featured guitarist Buckethead, but have explored different permutations with each new album. Though projects arranged by Laswell may be credited under the same name and often feature the same roster of musicians, the styles and themes explored on different albums can vary dramatically: Material began as a noisy dance music project, but subsequent releases have been centered around hip hop, jazz, or backing spoken word readings by beat generation icon William S. He has also played or produced music from the noisier, more aggressive end of the rock spectrum, like hardcore punk and metal.Īccording to music critic Chris Brazier, "Laswell’s pet concept is 'collision music' which involves bringing together musicians from wildly divergent but complementary spheres and seeing what comes out." The credo of one record label run by Laswell, and which typifies much of his work, is “Nothing Is True, Everything Is Permitted”. Laswell's music draws upon many different genres, most notably funk, various world music, jazz, dub and ambient styles. Laswell ranks among the most prolific of musicians, being involved in hundreds of recordings with many musicians from all over the world.
Genre = Avant-garde Art-rock Ambient Dub Electronic Experimental Punk jazz Industrial hip-hopĪssociated_acts = The Golden Palominos Praxis Massacre Material Buckethead Painkiller Divination Sacred System Ashesīill Laswell (born Februin Salem, Illinois and raised in Albion, Michigan) is an American bassist, producer and record label owner. Highly recommended.Img_capt = Bill Laswell at Moers Festival 2006, Germanyīorn = Birth date and age|1955|2|12|mf=y Salem, Illinois, U.S.
The album's center of gravity is "Extinguisher," which consists of nothing more than a bassline and incredibly dense and complex percussion - it's a masterpiece of tightly controlled funk, which somehow isn't the contradiction in terms one would think it would be. Oscillations was not his first foray into the drum'n'bass art form, but it was his first album-length drum'n'bass project, and he approaches it in just the way one would expect: by wedding basslines so simply perfect they could make one cry to the hardest beats he can get his hands on, all of them cranked up to about a million bpm, then layering everything with jazzy flute (" Faktura"), sinister keyboard washes ("Third Stage Navigator"), or exotic found-sound (like the Tibetan throat singing on "Digitaria").
In retrospect, it seems like it was created by some benevolent dancehall god with Laswell specifically in mind - the lazily loping, reggae-inflected basslines, the double-speed breakbeats, the faint aura of menace that always seems to lurk in ganja-clouded obscurity behind the groove, all of these are elements that come together perfectly in Laswell's art and persona. If drum'n'bass hadn't come along in the early '90s, bassist and producer Bill Laswell would probably have had to invent it.
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