On The One
Funk music and sensibilities have informed Laswell's music since his direct exposure to Funkadelic and Sly Stone in the early 1970s. In the early 1980s, his forays into hip hop in collaboration with Bambaataa, D.ST. and others foretold the fusion of old-school funk and flavor-of-the-minute rap music that George Clinton himself is just starting to grasp. Two albums with Nona Hendryx on RCA, The Art Of Defense and Nona, brought in the cream of New York's R&B/Funk musicians, many of whom were to be featured on Material's first direct explorations of the outer envelope of R&B and funk: One Down featured Nile Rodgers and Tony Thompson of Chic, Bernard Fowler, Hendryx, and Whitney Houston on vocals, Yogi Horton on drums, and Ronnie Drayton on guitar, with more radical players such as Frith and Archie Shepp to keep things interesting. Future Shock had set a precedent for innovative, high-tech funk fusion that was to be followed by a series of radical extrapolations with Sly & Robbie, initially with 1985's Language Barrier, which featured an incredible lineup of reggae, African, and funk innovators, including Michael Hampton and Bernie Worrell of Parliament/Funkadelic.
Funk Of Ages
A relationship in the early 1980s with ex-P-Funk keyboard genius Worrell, which started with his involvement in projects by The Last Poets, Hendryx, Toure Kunda, Fela, Baker, and "World Destruction," led to inevitable collaborations with other key P-Funk veterans such as Hampton, Gary "Mudbone" Cooper, and especially Bootsy Collins. Initially on the second Sly & Robbie album, Rhythm Killers, and a series of tracks for a Bootsy album (of which "Shock It To Me" on What's Bootsy Doing? is so far the only one to see light of day), and later on Ryuichi Sakamoto's Neo Geo album, Bootsy's relationship with Laswell quickly accelerated into his arrival into the fold as a key guitarist, bassist/vocalist/collaborator on a series of radical funk albums. Other early projects with Collins included Missionaries Moving by GettoVetts, Afrika Bambaataa's The Light, the final release in Laswell's trilogy of albums for Herbie Hancock, Perfect Machine -- also featuring Sugarfoot of The Ohio Players on vocals -- Masabumi Kikuchi's Dream Machine, Stevie Salas' Colorcode, The Limbomaniacs' Stinky Grooves, and others.
Bill's the director, like making a movie. You need artists, and you need someone to direct it. He's a goood director, because he comes off like he's got direction. And you just follow his lead. And it's pretty easy because we're all musicians, from the school accompanying each other. So we're from that school, the old school, of having to rely on each other, and it's good, it was good for us, it gave us good memories. We were into playing with each other anyway, and there was always someone at the helm, saying a little more of this, a little less of that, and saying, Yeah, that grooves, that's the one. Bill's perfect for that... Bill allowed me the opportunity to hook up with different people. It's been good, because when I was with the P-Funk thing, it didn't allow time to do anything else. And now I've been away from it a bit, and hooked up with Bill, it has allowed me to, as I say on my first record, to Stretch Out. And every time I'm in the studio with Bill, I learn something. It is a learning process, and I'm loving it... He's almost like a saviour, because you can't find many guys that take chances, that believe totally in the music, as opposed to what's going to get played on the radio, and so on...What Bill is doing is pulling us all together -- and that was a good thing because we couldn't to it within ourselves. I guess we'd been married so long that counselling had to come in if we were going to get back together! Bill's a good director, a good counsellor. -- Bootsy Collins, The Wire, 11/93
Blacktronic Science
1987's Rhythm Killers, the second Sly & Robbie album, featured Collins, Cooper, and Worrell, in a more directly funk-oriented release that included remakes of The Ohio Player's "Fire" and Alan Toussaint's "Yes We Can Can." The Third Power, initiated as a third Sly & Robbie project, but eventually metamorphosizing into Material's Axiom debut, was the final culmination of Laswell's Sly & Robbie "trilogy," featuring more P-Funk power from Garry Shider on a remake of the Funkadelic classic "Cosmic Slop," as well as the trademark James Brown/P-Funk horn section of Fred Wesley/Maceo Parker/Pee Wee Ellis. While forging deep into funk territory, it is interesting to note that Rhythm Killers and The Third Power also feature elaborate string arrangements, with the latter augmented by a full brass section, and all three Sly & Robbie projects brought then little-known rap artists (Doug E. Fresh, Shinehead, Jungle Brothers, Shabba Ranks, and more) to the fore.
Afrika Bambaataa's The Light was Laswell's first collaboration with P-Funk Overlord George Clinton, who was also brought in for Bernie Worrell's Blacktronic Science; the title song for the soundtrack to the Alex Winter film Freeked; and several tracks from Axiom's as-of-yet untitled funk project, slated for release in the spring of 1994, which also features the last recordings of the late central icon of Funkadelic, Eddie Hazel, as well as Blackbyrd McKnight, Buddy Miles, Sugarfoot, and many of the central figures of P-Funk. "Maximumisness" from Clinton's 1993 release Hey Man, Smell My Finger, was also produced by Laswell.
Other additions by Laswell to the P-Funk canon include Jungle Bass, a fusion of funk and house musics by Bootsy's Rubber Band; Maceo Parker's techno update on James Brown, co-produced by Collins, called For All The King's Men; several tracks on Worrell's second solo album, Funk Of Ages; an entire classical/jazz album by Worrell called Pieces Of Woo; and a new label, distributed by Polystar in Japan and Rykodisc in the US, called Black Arc. Designed as a series of vibrant funk albums by new and established masters of the genre, Black Arc's auspicious debut features four instant classics: Hardware by Third Eye (Buddy Miles, Bootsy Collins, Stevie Salas) is a funk-rock power trio; Under The Six by Slavemaster is a funk-hardcore project with Islamic overtones, featuring Michael "Kidd Funkadelic" Hampton on lead guitar; Out Of The Dark by OG Funk is an update on the original Funkadelic's gritty, gutbucket funk, led by Billy "Bass" Nelson, and featuring Worrell, Jerome "Bigfoot" Brailey, "Mudbone" Cooper, Grandmaster Melle Mel, and others; and Zillatron -- Lord Of The Harvest, a cyberfunk ambient/hardcore collaboration between Bootsy and Laswell, featuring Buckethead, Worrell, and others. The first album by the Buddy Miles Express in over a decade,featuring fiery remakes of "Born Under A Bad Sign" and "All Along The Watchtower," rounds out the initial Black Arc catalog.
When The Revolution Comes
Intertwined with Laswell's long-term explorations in funk and hip-hop is a series of relationships with the founding members of Harlem's legendary Last Poets, a group of black nationalist poets nurtured by the politics of Malcolm X, the Black Panthers, and other activists and artists in the 1960s. Laswell initially worked with the fiesty Jalal Nuriddin (aka Alifia Pudim, aka Lightnin' Rod) on a collaboration with D.ST. for "Mean Machine," and went on to produce a Last Poets album with Jalal and Sulieman El Hadi called Oh My People, also featuring Bernie Worrell and Aiyb Dieng. Laswell was also instrumental in the licensing from Alan Douglas through Celluloid of the first Last Poets records, Lightnin' Rod's classic Hustlers Convention, and mixing a collaboration with Jimi Hendrix and Buddy Miles called "Doriella Du Fontaine." Jalal is also featured on Material's The Third Power, released on Axiom in 1991, but the relationship with the Last Poets has often been tempestuous, even among those members brought back into the limelight through associations with Material. Sulieman El Hadi, who appears prominently with Jalal on Celluloid's Laswell-produced Oh My People album by the Last Poets in the mid-1980s, was bitter about Laswell's work in the 1990s with fellow Last Poets Umar Bin Hassan and Abiodun Oyewole.
El Hadi calls the white producer a "cultural bandit." "God willing, he's going to have a lawsuiton his hands," he says. "Who is Laswell to come and make a recomposition of our group? I'm beginning to believe thathe's hooked up with the CIA or FBI or something like that," he says. "It looks like an organized attempt by the government to destroy the group, to destroy our credibility." "Being real about it," Bin Hassan says sharply, "the division is based on silliness and pettiness. We're talking about getting black people together..." -- excerpted from an article by David Mills, "The Last Poets -- Their Radical Past, Their Hopeful Future, Their Broken Voice" by The Washington Post, 12/12/93In recent years, Laswell has focused his attention on Umar Bin Hassan and Oyewole, who along with Jalal comprised the original Last Poets as they appeared on the first record in 1970. A 1993 release on Axiom, Be Bop Or Be Dead, included remakes of the classics "Niggers Are Scared Of Revolution" and "This Is Madness" (title track to the second Last Poets album), with featured musicians including Bootsy Collins, Bernie Worrell, Buddy Miles, Aiyb Dieng, Foday Musa Suso, and more. Its sequels include The Last Poets' Holy Terror, featuring Grandmaster Melle Mel, Bootsy, and Worrell, and Abiodun Oyewole solo release, which includes a classic hip-hop update of "When The Revolution Comes," also from the first Last Poets album.
Hear No Evil
The next project -- and profoundly, an obvious follow-up to Seven Souls -- was the alternately stark and ethereal Hear No Evil, which was released as the second Bill Laswell "solo" album. With three percussionists -- Indian tabla virtuoso Zakir Hussain, Senegalese master Dieng, and Daniel Ponce from Cuba -- Shankar, and Skopelitis, Laswell created an even subtler fusion, a personal and introspective album that speaks volumes about a mysterious American life that has become rooted and based purely in the highest forms of interaction between master musicians, creating a rich, spacious, and primarily acoustic sound to which few other recordings can be compared.
On The One
Funk music and sensibilities have informed Laswell's music since his direct exposure to Funkadelic and Sly Stone in the early 1970s. In the early 1980s, his forays into hip hop in collaboration with Bambaataa, D.ST. and others foretold the fusion of old-school funk and flavor-of-the-minute rap music that George Clinton himself is just starting to grasp. Two albums with Nona Hendryx on RCA, The Art Of Defense and Nona, brought in the cream of New York's R&B/Funk musicians, many of whom were to be featured on Material's first direct explorations of the outer envelope of R&B and funk: One Down featured Nile Rodgers and Tony Thompson of Chic, Bernard Fowler, Hendryx, and Whitney Houston on vocals, Yogi Horton on drums, and Ronnie Drayton on guitar, with more radical players such as Frith and Archie Shepp to keep things interesting. Future Shock had set a precedent for innovative, high-tech funk fusion that was to be followed by a series of radical extrapolations with Sly & Robbie, initially with 1985's Language Barrier, which featured an incredible lineup of reggae, African, and funk innovators, including Michael Hampton and Bernie Worrell of Parliament/Funkadelic.
Funk Of Ages
A relationship in the early 1980s with ex-P-Funk keyboard genius Worrell, which started with his involvement in projects by The Last Poets, Hendryx, Toure Kunda, Fela, Baker, and "World Destruction," led to inevitable collaborations with other key P-Funk veterans such as Hampton, Gary "Mudbone" Cooper, and especially Bootsy Collins. Initially on the second Sly & Robbie album, Rhythm Killers, and a series of tracks for a Bootsy album (of which "Shock It To Me" on What's Bootsy Doing? is so far the only one to see light of day), and later on Ryuichi Sakamoto's Neo Geo album, Bootsy's relationship with Laswell quickly accelerated into his arrival into the fold as a key guitarist, bassist/vocalist/collaborator on a series of radical funk albums. Other early projects with Collins included Missionaries Moving by GettoVetts, Afrika Bambaataa's The Light, the final release in Laswell's trilogy of albums for Herbie Hancock, Perfect Machine -- also featuring Sugarfoot of The Ohio Players on vocals -- Masabumi Kikuchi's Dream Machine, Stevie Salas' Colorcode, The Limbomaniacs' Stinky Grooves, and others.
Bill's the director, like making a movie. You need artists, and you need someone to direct it. He's a goood director, because he comes off like he's got direction. And you just follow his lead. And it's pretty easy because we're all musicians, from the school accompanying each other. So we're from that school, the old school, of having to rely on each other, and it's good, it was good for us, it gave us good memories. We were into playing with each other anyway, and there was always someone at the helm, saying a little more of this, a little less of that, and saying, Yeah, that grooves, that's the one. Bill's perfect for that... Bill allowed me the opportunity to hook up with different people. It's been good, because when I was with the P-Funk thing, it didn't allow time to do anything else. And now I've been away from it a bit, and hooked up with Bill, it has allowed me to, as I say on my first record, to Stretch Out. And every time I'm in the studio with Bill, I learn something. It is a learning process, and I'm loving it... He's almost like a saviour, because you can't find many guys that take chances, that believe totally in the music, as opposed to what's going to get played on the radio, and so on...What Bill is doing is pulling us all together -- and that was a good thing because we couldn't to it within ourselves. I guess we'd been married so long that counselling had to come in if we were going to get back together! Bill's a good director, a good counsellor. -- Bootsy Collins, The Wire, 11/93
Blacktronic Science
1987's Rhythm Killers, the second Sly & Robbie album, featured Collins, Cooper, and Worrell, in a more directly funk-oriented release that included remakes of The Ohio Player's "Fire" and Alan Toussaint's "Yes We Can Can." The Third Power, initiated as a third Sly & Robbie project, but eventually metamorphosizing into Material's Axiom debut, was the final culmination of Laswell's Sly & Robbie "trilogy," featuring more P-Funk power from Garry Shider on a remake of the Funkadelic classic "Cosmic Slop," as well as the trademark James Brown/P-Funk horn section of Fred Wesley/Maceo Parker/Pee Wee Ellis. While forging deep into funk territory, it is interesting to note that Rhythm Killers and The Third Power also feature elaborate string arrangements, with the latter augmented by a full brass section, and all three Sly & Robbie projects brought then little-known rap artists (Doug E. Fresh, Shinehead, Jungle Brothers, Shabba Ranks, and more) to the fore.
Afrika Bambaataa's The Light was Laswell's first collaboration with P-Funk Overlord George Clinton, who was also brought in for Bernie Worrell's Blacktronic Science; the title song for the soundtrack to the Alex Winter film Freeked; and several tracks from Axiom's as-of-yet untitled funk project, slated for release in the spring of 1994, which also features the last recordings of the late central icon of Funkadelic, Eddie Hazel, as well as Blackbyrd McKnight, Buddy Miles, Sugarfoot, and many of the central figures of P-Funk. "Maximumisness" from Clinton's 1993 release Hey Man, Smell My Finger, was also produced by Laswell.
Other additions by Laswell to the P-Funk canon include Jungle Bass, a fusion of funk and house musics by Bootsy's Rubber Band; Maceo Parker's techno update on James Brown, co-produced by Collins, called For All The King's Men; several tracks on Worrell's second solo album, Funk Of Ages; an entire classical/jazz album by Worrell called Pieces Of Woo; and a new label, distributed by Polystar in Japan and Rykodisc in the US, called Black Arc. Designed as a series of vibrant funk albums by new and established masters of the genre, Black Arc's auspicious debut features four instant classics: Hardware by Third Eye (Buddy Miles, Bootsy Collins, Stevie Salas) is a funk-rock power trio; Under The Six by Slavemaster is a funk-hardcore project with Islamic overtones, featuring Michael "Kidd Funkadelic" Hampton on lead guitar; Out Of The Dark by OG Funk is an update on the original Funkadelic's gritty, gutbucket funk, led by Billy "Bass" Nelson, and featuring Worrell, Jerome "Bigfoot" Brailey, "Mudbone" Cooper, Grandmaster Melle Mel, and others; and Zillatron -- Lord Of The Harvest, a cyberfunk ambient/hardcore collaboration between Bootsy and Laswell, featuring Buckethead, Worrell, and others. The first album by the Buddy Miles Express in over a decade,featuring fiery remakes of "Born Under A Bad Sign" and "All Along The Watchtower," rounds out the initial Black Arc catalog.
When The Revolution Comes
Intertwined with Laswell's long-term explorations in funk and hip-hop is a series of relationships with the founding members of Harlem's legendary Last Poets, a group of black nationalist poets nurtured by the politics of Malcolm X, the Black Panthers, and other activists and artists in the 1960s. Laswell initially worked with the fiesty Jalal Nuriddin (aka Alifia Pudim, aka Lightnin' Rod) on a collaboration with D.ST. for "Mean Machine," and went on to produce a Last Poets album with Jalal and Sulieman El Hadi called Oh My People, also featuring Bernie Worrell and Aiyb Dieng. Laswell was also instrumental in the licensing from Alan Douglas through Celluloid of the first Last Poets records, Lightnin' Rod's classic Hustlers Convention, and mixing a collaboration with Jimi Hendrix and Buddy Miles called "Doriella Du Fontaine." Jalal is also featured on Material's The Third Power, released on Axiom in 1991, but the relationship with the Last Poets has often been tempestuous, even among those members brought back into the limelight through associations with Material. Sulieman El Hadi, who appears prominently with Jalal on Celluloid's Laswell-produced Oh My People album by the Last Poets in the mid-1980s, was bitter about Laswell's work in the 1990s with fellow Last Poets Umar Bin Hassan and Abiodun Oyewole.
El Hadi calls the white producer a "cultural bandit." "God willing, he's going to have a lawsuiton his hands," he says. "Who is Laswell to come and make a recomposition of our group? I'm beginning to believe thathe's hooked up with the CIA or FBI or something like that," he says. "It looks like an organized attempt by the government to destroy the group, to destroy our credibility." "Being real about it," Bin Hassan says sharply, "the division is based on silliness and pettiness. We're talking about getting black people together..." -- excerptedfrom an article by David Mills, "The Last Poets -- Their Radical Past, Their HopefulFuture, Their Broken Voice" by The Washington Post, 12/12/93In recent years, Laswell has focused his attention on Umar Bin Hassan and Oyewole, who along with Jalal comprised the original Last Poets as they appeared on the first record in 1970. A 1993 release on Axiom, Be Bop Or Be Dead, included remakes of the classics "Niggers Are Scared Of Revolution" and "This Is Madness" (title track to the second Last Poets album), with featured musicians including Bootsy Collins, Bernie Worrell, Buddy Miles, Aiyb Dieng, Foday Musa Suso, and more. Its sequels include The Last Poets' Holy Terror, featuring Grandmaster Melle Mel, Bootsy, and Worrell, and Abiodun Oyewole solo release, which includes a classic hip-hop update of "When The Revolution Comes," also from the first Last Poets album.
The Map Is Not The Territory
Having spent extended periods of time outside of the US -- recording, traveling, touring, or simply researching -- Laswell has absorbed and experienced invaluable amounts of personal data and insight on music, art, and culture. He has been involved in literally scores of projects in Japan, as a result of his over forty trips there, and has collaborated with Ryuichi Sakamoto, Akira Sakata, Yosuke Yamashita, Toshinori Kondo, Yugi Takahashi, Hideo Yamaki, Kiyohiko Senba, Kazumi Watanabe, Yukihiro Isso, Haruo Togashi, The Stalin, Haino Keiji, Masabumi Kikuchi, Makigami Koichi, Haruna Miyake, Kazutoki Umezu, Ayuo Takahashi, members of the Boredoms and S.O.B., painter and collage artist Shinro Ohtake, and many others. Two groups that have existed only in Asia are Mooko, a collaboration with Akira Sakata and Ronald Shannon Jackson, and SXL, which featured Samulnori, four Korean traditional percussionists from Seoul, with Aiyb Dieng, Shannon, and Shankar. Almost every existing band he has created has toured Japan extensively as well, including various incarnations of Material (whose recent Live In Japan features Baker, Worrell, Suso, Dieng, and Skopelitis), Massacre under various other names, Last Exit, and Painkiller.
Other projects "indigenous" to nations abroad include collaborations with progressive Belgian group X-Legged Sally; Australia's Aboriginal group Yothu Yindi; a project with Morocco-based Aisha Kandisha's Jarring Effects, which also featured Umar Bin Hassan and Worrell; and, among various others, productions with French artists FFF (their debut album and remixes featuring George Clinton and Cutty Ranks), remixes for SOON E MC, and a piece called "I'll Strangle You," based on a poem by Arthur Rimbaud, from an album by Hector Zazou called Sahara Blue, which also features John Cale, Ryuichi Sakamoto, David Sylvian, actor Gerard Depardieu, and others.
Time Is That Which Ends
The Subharmonic label, rising and shining from the ashes of Celluloid, is devoted exclusively to Laswell's creations, conceptions, and constructions in ambient/trance/dub and hardcore. The Divination series of ambient projects pushes the inner envelopes of ambient music in ethereal dreamscapes: Divination - ambient dub volume I features Chinese virtuoso vocalist Sola, synth textures by Jeff Bova, and the guitar augmentations of Skopelitis and Buckethead. Vol. II - Dead Slow features an innovative multiple-bassline approach, in which Laswell is joined in the low end by Jah Wobble, as well as Mick Harris and Bova.
Subharmonic also serves as an outlet for the jagged sonic edge of hardcore. The latest project released under the name of Praxis is Sacrifist, a brutal assault of compressed, pounding distortion and thrash, featuring Yamatsuke Eye, John Zorn, Buckethead, Bootsy, Worrell, B. I. G., and more. Sacrifist employs extensive editing and a collage sensibility to the composition that sets it apart in important ways beyond its sheer aggression. While much has been made of the fusion of post-punk and funk sensibilities as "alternative" rock becomes the mainstream, Laswell's incorporation of Bootsy and Worrell into aggressive thrash contexts is a deeper thing to behold. In Zillatron and the last two Praxis albums, Laswell has effectively bridged the gap between the heretofore disparate areas of truly over-the-top hard rock, intricate deep funk arrangement, and "cut-up" editing and production, resulting in yet another improbable but intriguing fusion.
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