A longtime linchpin of the New York City underground music scene,
Bill Laswell was among the most prolific artists in contemporary music; as a performer, producer, and label chief, his imprint is on literally hundreds of albums, the majority of them characterized by a signature sound fusing the energy of
punk with the bone-rattling rhythms of
funk. Born on February 12, 1955, in Salem, IL, he initially played guitar, but soon switched to bass; raised primarily in the Detroit area, he honed his skills in local
funk outfits before relocating to New York in 1978. There
Laswell formed
Material, an outlet for his
experimental approach toward sounds ranging from
jazz to
hip-hop to
worldbeat;
(
read more)
A longtime linchpin of the New York City underground music scene,
Bill Laswell was among the most prolific artists in contemporary music; as a performer, producer, and label chief, his imprint is on literally hundreds of albums, the majority of them characterized by a signature sound fusing the energy of
punk with the bone-rattling rhythms of
funk. Born on February 12, 1955, in Salem, IL, he initially played guitar, but soon switched to bass; raised primarily in the Detroit area, he honed his skills in local
funk outfits before relocating to New York in 1978. There
Laswell formed
Material, an outlet for his
experimental approach toward sounds ranging from
jazz to
hip-hop to
worldbeat; originally the backup unit for Daevid Allen, the group soon began working on its own, issuing its debut EP Temporary Music in 1979.
In addition to fronting
Material,
Laswell also mounted a solo career, issuing
Baselines in 1982 on Celluloid, a label he partly owned and operated.
Don't have the
FREE
BlueBeat Player yet?
Download it now to listen to great programs at 320kbps!
Appearances on key recordings by the likes of
David Byrne,
John Zorn, Fred Frith, and
the Golden Palominos established
Laswell as a virtual nexus of the downtown N.Y.C. community, and in 1983 he broke into the mainstream with his production work on
Herbie Hancock's smash "Rockit," which he also co-wrote; the follow-up LP, Sound-System, won him a Grammy. Throughout the mid-'80s
Laswell was everywhere, playing bass on LPs from artists including
Mick Jagger,
Peter Gabriel,
Yoko Ono, and
Laurie Anderson; he also joined the avant group Curlew, and produced a number of African acts.
In 1986,
Laswell joined guitarist
Sonny Sharrock, drummer
Ronald Shannon Jackson, and saxophonist
Peter Brötzmann in the group Last Exit; a second solo LP, Hear No Evil, appeared two years later, and after a long hiatus he also resurrected
Material in 1989 with Seven Souls. Another project, the
hip-hop-flavored
Praxis, was resumed after close to a decade of inactivity with 1992's
Transmutation (Mutatis Mutandis). In 1990,
Laswell formed another label, Axiom, to explore his interest in the new sounds of
ambient and
techno; where in the past his work rarely appeared solely under his own name, by the middle of the decade he was issuing several solo records annually in a wide range of styles from
dub to
jazz. He also remained among the most prolific producers in the business, collaborating with the likes of
Dub Syndicate, Pete Namlook,
Buckethead, and
DJ Spooky.
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. The Only Way to Go Is Down followed on Sublight Records in 2006. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Music Guide
(
collapse)
2002 Crammed Discs
