Sundaze (39)

Hello, Sundaze continues with the final part on Bill Laswell 's ambience. No reason to sulk about that, because Rhotation 39 will be a Bill Laswell week of sorts, Around The World, Eight-X and Into The Groove will all revolve around this creative music genius.

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Continued from last week

With Palm Pictures slowly moving into film and away from music with the changing landscape of the industry, Laswell lost a major supporter of his more high-concept albums as well as the Axiom imprint. Under Palm’s umbrella, though, four highly regarded albums and a DVD set were released. Of those releases there was a DVD set, a studio release and a live 2-disc set from Tabla Beat Science. At the request of Chris Blackwell, Laswell oversaw Ethiopian singer Gigi’s debut release for Palm Pictures. Supplementing Gigi’s multilingual, Ethiopian rooted vocals with a vast array of well respected musicians such as Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock and Laswell himself, they created a strong release that was very well-received. Laswell and Gigi also became romantically involved and were later married. She has figured in a number of his releases and concerts over the years, and he has produced further outings by Gigi such as her Abyssinia Infinite grouping and her second solo release for Palm, Gold & Wax.

Laswell founded a second label imprint as a critical proving ground for radically new, and in fact revolutionary, sound. Innerhythmic is a label conceived as an alternative outlet for musicians from a variety of different backgrounds, dedicated to exploring the recombinant possibilities of music. With a scope of influence that welcomes the traditional and “trance” rhythms of far-flung cultures as openly as the hip-hop, dub, jungle, jazz, funk and electronic cyber-styles emanating from the DJ underground and beyond, the label stands out as an active realization of the “collage system” - a system where entirely new forms can emerge almost at will from fusions of the familiar, an ecstatic journey into known and unknown worlds of sound.
1999 saw the first release (Eraldo Bernocchi and Toshinori Kondo’s Charged project) on Innerythmic. After a brief inactive period, the label re-started again in earnest in 2001, releasing over the next few years a slew of innovative albums from the likes Nicky Skopelitis/Raoul Bjorkenheim, James Blood Ulmer, Shine and Gonervill among others.

Though touching on the realm of drum n bass in the ‘90s with his Oscillations releases and the compilation Submerged: Tetragramaton, the last few years have seen Laswell step up his work in this area. Starting with Brutal Calling, a hard drum n bass release with OHM Resistance label owner Submerged, a series of releases and live dates have cropped up. Laswell’s new project in this vein is Method of Defiance. The first release focused on the core of Laswell and Submerged once again (with contributions from Toshinori Kondo and Guy Licata) but the recent Inamorata stretched the concept out, pairing Laswell’s bass with a different combination of respected jazz and world musicians and drum n bass producers on each track. Artists like Herbie Hancock, John Zorn, Pharoah Sanders, Nils Petter Molvaer, Toshinori Kondo and Buckethead

Along with frequent live dates around the world with Method of Defiance, Material, Painkiller and the reformed in the late ‘90s Massacre (with This Heat’s Charles Hayward now in the drummchair) Laswell still makes numerous trips to Japan each year for various recordings and live dates, including his ongoing Tokyo Rotation mini-festivals at the Shinjuku Pit-Inn. In 2004, Laswell signed a multi-album label deal with the Sanctuary Records group. The deal spawned his new label, Nagual. Through Sanctuary's earlier acquisition of the seminal reggae label Trojan, Laswell now had access to the Jamaican label's sizeable back catalog. Picking some of his favorite cuts and remixing them, Laswell issued the Trojan-sourced Dub Massive: Chapter One and Chapter Two in May 2005.

In 2005, Laswell was invited to appear on the PBS series Soundstage. The show featured a host of the musicians he has played with over the years including incarnations of his Praxis and Tabla Beat Science projects. Though Laswell mixed the show in 5.1, to date no DVD or official recording has been released.

The New York-based producer, bassist and visionary is responsible for some of the most interesting and influential recordings of the last 20 years. But unlike other sonic architects, he has no rulebook or pre-defined codes. The range of Bill Laswell’s music has demanded a new openness from musician and listener alike, and through his work points of congruence between genres have become clearer and we now have new hybrid forms to reckon with. “Hitting people on a real level and trying to lift their awareness up a notch or two, to get them to think beyond the conventionally held beliefs that certain musics only work in certain ways. That’s the driving force behind most of what I do, and if it means sacrificing notoriety and acceptance for freedom, creativity and integrity, I’ll do it every time.”


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Bill Laswell - Dub Chamber 3 (00 flac 273mb)

Laswell's grounding in reggae is evident in every note he plays, and his mystical, experimental production style has always been heavily influenced by such dubmasters as King Tubby, Scientist, and Lee "Scratch" Perry. The third volume in his Sacred System trilogy (called, confusingly, Dub Chamber 3) is more muscular than some of his other dubwise excursions, and although there's not much here to challenge the mind, the dreamy flavor of this music is consistently fortified by sturdy beats and Laswell's inimitably tasty basslines. The album consists of four long tracks; on all of them, he's joined by guitarist Nicky Skopelitis, and two of them also feature the playing of Norwegian trumpeter Nils Petter Molvaer, whose treated trumpet gives everything a beautiful, eerie sheen. Other guests include bassist Jah Wobble, percussionist Karsh Kale, and pianist Craig Taborn.



1 - Beyond The Zero (9:09)
2 - Cybotron (9:27)
3 - Devil Syndrome (11:53)
4 - A Screaming Comes Across The Sky (17:34)

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Bill Laswell / Sacred System - Book Of Exit : Dub Chamber 4 (02 flac 232mb)

While the previous "Dub Chamber" releases leaned more toward Jamaican-style dub music, with instruments dropping in and out and plenty of reverb and delay, this is altogether a different beat, in large part due to the vocals of Ethiopian singer Gigi. And what Laswell, Gigi, drummer/tabla player Karsh Kale, and percussionist Aiyb Dieng end up with is really ambient dub -- something lighter and more flowing because it adapts itself to the vocals. And Gigi is in excellent form, possibly better than on her own debut, whether on "Ethiopia" or the memorable, beautiful and ethereal "Jerusalem,". Laswell's light hand at the controls works subtly -- shifts happen gradually, making for a sense of movement and focus about the pieces. This dub chamber is a place worth exploring....



1 - Ethiopia (Voc.Gigi) (6:14)
2 - Lower Ground (7:34)
3 - Shashamani (7:29)
4 - Bati (Voc.Gigi) (7:47)
5 - Land Of Look Behind (6:45)
6 - Jerusalem (12:29)

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Bill Laswell - Version 2 Version - A Dub Transmission (04 flac 317mb)

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, 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, but then, Laswell is known for shaking things up, which is why his vision of dubwise is experimental rather than traditional.



1 - Dystopia (8:39)
2 - Simulacra (8:55)
3 - Space-Time Paradox (8:43)
4 - Babylon Site (6:18)
5 - Night City (8:57)
6 - System Malfunction (9:43)

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