Jazz Articles about Bill Laswell

Hal Willner, Ex Eye, Bill Laswell, Zion 80 & Brandon Seabrook

by Martin Longley
July 22, 2016

Hal Willner The Stone June 14, 15, 17, 2016 Hal Willner spent six nights in residence at The Stone, presenting two sets each evening. This Philadelphian producer has immaculate taste, as illustrated by his greatest achievements: a series of conceptual albums that feature a host of carefully selected artists, assigned with the task of addressing the music of a chosen composing giant. There was That's The Way I Feel Now (Thelonious Monk), Lost In ...

Masahiro Shimba & Bill Laswell: Dubopera

by C. Michael Bailey
February 15, 2016

Recently, researchers with the Ligo Collaboration reported that they had detected gravitational waves (predicted by Einstein in his General Theory of Relativity 100 years ago) resulting from the collision between two black holes a billion years ago. Bassist and provocateur Bill Laswell has made a career of doting the same thing with musical genre, creating new and different forms with lasting consequences. Most notable has been Laswell's application of Dub, an electronic progeny of Reggae, to different styles of music ...

Bill Laswell: No Boundaries

by Nenad Georgievski
March 30, 2015

For some people music is a mere entertainment product, a pastime amusement. For others music is a powerful force and the act of its creation carries within itself a sense of discovery. Bill Laswell's music, production and remixes have always carried that sense of discovery and riskiness. Multifariously creative and independent, he has always been revered by avant-gardists, jazz and improv and electronic music fans with equal zeal.  In the last 30 years, this incontrovertibly cool producer has ...

Material: Hallucination Engine

by John Kelman
February 16, 2015

Material Hallucination EngineAxiom1994 Some albums come along without any real intention other than to be what the are yet, without any fanfare, completely change the possible ways music can be perceived, felt and created by those lucky enough to hear them. Today's Rediscovery is one such album, a record that wasn't just ahead of its time when it was released in 1994; it seems still ahead of its time today, more than twenty years later. ...

Raoul Björkenheim - Bill Laswell - Morgan Ågren: Blixt

by AAJ Italy Staff
March 19, 2012

Il chitarrista Raoul Björkenheim è ingiustamente sottovalutato e la casa discografica Cuneiform sta facendo di tutto per dargli quella visibilità che merita da oltre vent'anni. Questo ottimo Blixt potrebbe essere la giusta occasione per farlo entrare definitivamente nel firmamento dei migliori interpreti dello strumento e consacrarlo come punto di riferimento nel panorama piuttosto ristretto dei chitarristi di avanguardia. Lo affiancano in questo album, impeccabilmente registrato, il celebra bassista Bill Laswell e il meno noto batterista svedese Morgan Ågren, titolare della ...

Praxis: Tennessee 2004

by Chris M. Slawecki
October 16, 2007

Praxis is the operative name of an experimental jazz/rock/funk/dub quartet led by bassist Bill Laswell with drummer Brain (Les Claypool's Primus), guitarist Buckethead and keyboardist Bernie Worrell (wizard of synthesized funk for P-Funk, Talking Head, etc...). They first came to Frankenstein-like life in 1993: because like that mad doctor, Laswell stitched Praxis together from disparate parts of the contemporary music corpse and then animated it into a sometimes powerful, and sometimes hideous, life-form.

In 2004, Praxis hit the ...

Bill Laswell/Various Artists: Subharmonic In Dub

by Chris M. Slawecki
September 22, 2005

Bill Laswell has composed, performed, and produced just about every style of music known to man--and a few more, too. In the early 1990s, in tandem with producer John Matarazzo (Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Tito Puente, Manu Dibango, Fela Kuti, Sly & Robbie), Laswell co-founded Axiom Records.

Through Axiom and its subsidiaries (including Subharmonic and Strata Records), Laswell has explored modern electronic music, including ambient, dub, and funk. This extensive and kaleidoscopic two-CD overview of Laswell's work through ...