I'll reluctantly admit that I own quite a few albums on which billy
laswell is a producer or player.. he does seem to go for quantity over
quality, and he's been mining the same vein of world-psych-funk-trance for
n years now. that said, he's been involved in some ambitious & successful
projects, although I can't think of anything recent that's really grabbed
me. with a warning that my taste for his stuff tends toward the noisier
end of the spectrum .... my essential B.L. list looks like this:
massacre - killing time
.brutal 'power trio' with laswell, fred frith and fred maher. totally
great improvised aggro. the newer massacre album with charles hayward
isn't nearly as good as this. they also appear on one side of frith's album
'speechless,' which is also excellent.
p.i.l. - album (or "CD" or "Cassette")
.not credited on the record anywhere, I don't think, but the band is
laswell's, with tony williams, jonas hellborg, malachi favors, steve
turre, ryuichi sakamoto & others.
herbie hancock - rockit
.however dated it sounds now, this was amazing at the time (1983).
recorded at laswell's studio with michael beinhorn from material and D.ST
last exit - everything except maybe "the noise of trouble"
.jazz noise with laswell, sonny sharrock, peter brotzmann & ronald shannon
jackson.
painkiller - trio with laswell, mick harris, john zorn. yamantaka eye
appears on disc 3 of 'execution ground.' caused aural hallucinations when
I saw them play the cat's cradle in NC.
master musicians of jajouka - apocalypse across the sky
.laswell-recorded/produced sessions with the rediculously over-hyper
master musicians of jajouka, morocco. still mind-blowing, though.
a lot of the stuff on his now-defunct axiom label was pretty good.. henry
threadgill, nicky skopelitis, sonny sharrock, maleem mahmoud ghania,
here's what appears to be a complete laswell discography:
http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Underground/7093/laswell/
ethan
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