Is there a worse producer in the universe than Bill Laswell?

Another possible Laswell triumph: Herbie Hancock's "Rockit".

The only dud-ish thing I can think of is the Swans album and that wasn't Laswell's fault, I don't think. I like the way he throws 80s gloss on his bass sound on improv records and then lets noise rip into it.

Strike that, reverse it = just how I feel, man.

As a bassist he's one of those guys that plays an interesting bassline here and there but never really holds a bottom, and also uses way too many effects, rendering his tone flat and robofarty.

You know what's funny about this thread? Everybody on it is like, "Bill Laswell is awful, terrible and hideous...but I like Record X by Brilliant Artist Y" -- and invariably that record sucks, too!

I do not hold myself harmless here.

lately anything Visconti touched turns to crap.

Laswell's recording of the Master Musicians of Jajouka's "Apocalypse Across the Sky" is pretty amazing.

^^^^this

http://i.walmart.com/i/p/00/07/56/78/25/0007567825532_500X500.jpg

is Mick going through her purse on that cover?

He used her lipstick.

I think Laswell is pretty much hit and miss. I generally like his ideas, but often the actual sound on his stuff is often pretty flat and boring, and sometimes his choices of organizing the sound is downright confusing, in a bad way. And his bass playing is rather uninspired too. So maybe he should work just as an ideas man/curator, and leave the actual sound production to other folks. However, the trio of electro albums he did with Herbie Hancock is still pretty much unfuckwithable - especially Perfect Machine, which is maybe the best electro-funk album of all time. So I can't really call anyone who produced those albums the worst in the universe.

yeah - he's very erratic but he's been involved with too many totally amazing things (Rockit, MMOJ, Last Exit) to really call him terrible.

Laswell's recording of the Master Musicians of Jajouka's "Apocalypse Across the Sky" is pretty amazing.

^^^^this

this was the soundtrack to the first bad acid trip I ever had and I've had a really hard time listening to it ever since (so, like, 15 years!). In fact I must not even have this anymore, I don't remember seeing it. It was amazing up to that point though.

I like Laswell's work on PIL's Album and Swan's "The Burning World", I know everyone hates those records but I think they're great, it's a stroke of genius to put Steve Vai on a Lydon record.

Album is great

also the most annoying thing about Laswell to me is his eagerness to take credit for everything, including hip hop that I think he arguably had little to do with. This was more annoying ten years ago when it seemed really off the wall and not true; these days it kind of seems like he already convinced everyone of his absolute paramount importance and people believe it.

yeah it seems like everyone hated 'album' at the time because it sounded so commercial but for fuck's sake look what came after that. It's like the last artistically worthy thing Lydon ever involved himself in.

I dunno producing the first record to feature scratching is kind of a big deal. he didn't "invent" hip-hop anymore than James Brown did, but he was certainly in the right place at the right time doing the right thing with the right people.

you can say that about a lot of his career I guess.

http://www.a-i-u.net/images/starpeace.jpg

oh yoko

Starpeace of shit is more like it.

I have far too many conflicting feelings about Laswell for one post. As mentioned upthread, the guy SHOULD be an absolute favorite of mine (and was...a long, long time ago) -- he's worked with just about every hero I could imagine (he was Jim O'Rourke before Jim O'Rourke was cool).

But the sheer amount of aimless supersession in his catalog is unforgivable and, in practice, little different than those jams that would conclude the Prince's Trust concerts back in the 80s. It's sort of the dark side of Toop's Ocean of Sound theory, really -- just this soup of sound, as if throwing Bernie Worrell and Bootsy Collins on a record naturally makes it funkier.

i miss dave q

he's kept this thread going for 7 years, surely that's got to count for something

― Edward III, Thursday, August 14, 2008 10:49 AM (3 years ago)

Also enjoyed NTI's elaboration of his "soup" stance in the following post.

I don't miss the 2001 me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3CZPNT9GSs...pertinent...

Speaking of Laswell on the Whitney Houston RIP thread, somebody says Nona Hendryx is better suited to Laswell's purposes. I liked Nona with Proproganda, especially live, but she always seemed too compressed on (my already ancient stereo's impression of) the first pressing of One Down. Maybe Laswell as more suitably rank-n-filem than Whitney. Here's the way Alfred and I discussed "Memories":

Only things wrong with "Memories": Shepp, struggling with his lip for years, overplays the very first note of his solo, a little "ethereal" breathiness/brain fart, but then redeems himself (thing of no wrong notes if you can come up with the right context); also, do we really need kitchen percussion to show how real this is? But the song, the singer the feeling merge perfectly.

Gamble & Huff also recalled Ms. Houston’s strong Philly connection:
- A then-unknown Whitney Houston recorded “Hold Me,” a duet with Gamble & Huff recording artist Teddy Pendergrass for his 1984 Elektra album, “Love Language,” his first following the automobile accident that left him paralyzed.

― dow, Sunday, February 12, 2012 3:14 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Only things wrong with "Memories": Shepp, struggling with his lip for years, overplays the very first note of his solo

I wondered about this! I agree. At any rate it's too loud for a few seconds.

― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, February 12, 2012 3:17 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Kind of a "Hahhh", quietly overwrought stage whisper--not just the lip, maybe also the perils of what the young Shepp mocked as "my Stan Getz shit", talking to Leroi Jones. But when they were on it, Getz and Shepp made a lot of good records fueled by that shit (among other things).

missed cutting the beginning of the Gamble & Huff press release, sorry

Also clipped "Maybe Laswell heard Nona as more rank-n-file than Whitney" (so maybe deliberately compressed her)

more of a starship trooper

more ship than stars, except to us fans of the in-crowd

I adore the Whitney track...soooooo downtown NY '81

i'm still p fond of the early laswell, right up to last exit i guess -- it was VERY patchy, but i think that was part of the point (free improvisation is patchy!)

Happy birthday, Bill Laswell.

http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=nona+hendryx+ghost+love&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CDEQtwIwAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DuYNEuOHeL1o&ei=xUE4T5ylJcf38QO1hc2dBA&usg=AFQjCNFYsRdX1yBTesBXSfDjvTHrKad5Hg

haha i was actually planning a "laswell: where is the LOVE" thread, so i searched to check it wasn't a repeat and found tarden-as-was (from 11 years ago!)

"laswell: where is the LOVE (ON HIS 57th BIRTHDAY)?"

Material's Memory Serves and One Down have aged v well

yup. 2 really good albums. Was he involved in the Zillatron album? That was the best Bootsy album in the last 25 years.

Ask The Ages, Low-Life, and "Bonzo Goes To Washington" are all killer.

also: Sly & Robbie's Rhythm Killers (though may have co-produced w them), Motorhead's Orgasmatron.

Unfuckwithable: Ronald Shannon Jackson's Texas

and "Bonzo Goes To Washington"

Did Laswell actually had something to do with this? I've never heard that he did. Wasn't it produced by Arthur Russell?

I had a few of Laswell's projects over the years, these three I kept. If you like what he did with the Miles Davis recordings, these things are pretty much in that vein, if perhaps a bit more electronic in nature.

Material - Hallucination Engine
Sacred System Dub - Chapter 1 & Chapter 2

i miss dave q

― mark s, Sunday, 12 February 2012 22:18 (Yesterday) Permalink

You don't even post here any more.

xp You're right, Laswell didn't work on BGTW. Not sure why I thought that, unless I confused him with Jerry Harrison.

he does too sometimes.

x-post

the first Colorcode record smokes with RAW POWER!!

2nd the many mentions of sharrock's ask the ages. one of my very favorite albums. and motorhead's orgasmatron is alright. not the most sympathetic production they've ever had, but far from the worst. remember loving the two sacred system albums earlnash just mentioned, though it's been a while.

also remember digging some of the releases on the "strata" offshoot of laswell's subharmonic imprint, especially halo by azonic. earth-style heavy drones produced by laswell and andy hawkins. cool shit.

I interviewed him last year; we talked about Last Exit, Painkiller, some of his other industrial-metal-dub projects, the John Zorn/Fred Frith/Laswell/Dave Lombardo band, recording Pharoah Sanders in North Africa, and lots of other stuff. Here's a link.

As a producer I think he's done some cool (and terrible!) stuff. As a player, much more hit or miss, but some of those hits hit hard, like Painkiller, Massacre, Last Exit and Peter Gabriel's "This is the Picture."

I don't think his hit/miss ratio is bad at all. He's just done so fucking much. It's easy to point to a lot of good projects if you like the guy and easy to point at a lot of middling to poor stuff if you don't feel like being generous towards him.

ooh for an extended/remastered edition of rhythm killers.

it has to happen soon surely ?

I think some of his misses, like in my opinion the Miles Davis remixes or Bob Marley remixes, are so bad they really offset his frequent high points. At the time I really liked his sort of new age dub he was up to with the later golden palominos records, but I have a feeling they have not aged well.

I need to listen to Panthalassa (the Miles record) again. I listened to Divine Light (his remix of Carlos Santana's Love Devotion Surrender and Illuminations) recently and it's good; kind of an ambient reimagining of those records, but with enough guitar fireworks to keep it from dissolving into a puddle of sugar water.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hev2qx1y2IU

Dude produced "Rockit" so...yes, there is a worse producer out there somewhere. Only know that b/c yesterday I heard a Sly and Robbie album from '85 that Laswell produced called Language Barrier that sounded so much like "Rockit" I had to look it all up. Album had a bunch of the same musicians on it as Future Shock (and Dylan somewhere on it, too, but didn't hear him on the song I heard.

I remember being like downright angry after I bought Panthalassa, like I had literally been ripped off. I just listened to a bit of it and it didn't bother me as much as I remembered. Still not sure what it adds to the picture or why I wouldn't just listen to the miles records.

I just bought three old Axiom releases from Laswell's Bandcamp page - Billy Bang's Outline No. 12 (conducted by Butch Morris), Henry Threadgill's Too Much Sugar for a Dime, and Maleem Mahmoud Ghania and Pharoah Sanders' The Trance of Seven Colors.

I like his Miles remix record

I do too.

I haven't heard all that many Axiom records, and the hit/miss ratio is pretty terrible for what I've heard, but I remember being very captivated by the fold-out catalog that came with one of the cds I got in college. It felt like he was creating a world, throwing together with all these different genres, musicians I'd heard of, and mysterious titles and artwork. That was a bigger influence on me than the music, a lot of which is, like, bad trip-hop and funk jams.