Jah Wobble and Bill Laswell

I'm a huge fan of Jah Wobble. Love his work with PIL and I have recordings of a couple of his solo projects Solaris and Invaders of the heart (I think that's what it's called). Good stuff! Bill Laswell is also a great player, wasn't he involved in the "Golden Palaminos" records?

 

Wobble is great; Laswell is overrated IMO. The sidemen he hires for his million different projects are all fantastic, but then Laswell overproduces the life out of the recordings. I saw Wobble play just last year, and it was a great show- heartfelt and interesting without being pretentious or overwrought.

 

I like Jah Wobble a LOT.

 

+1

 

Laswell is at his best when he is not in a position to call all the shots like this. The first Last Exit record, Massacre's Killing Time and the duo record with Brotzmann (Low Life maybe?) are all pretty cool.

 

Laswell is in my top 5. One of the greats on bass but his notoriety seems to have come more from his producing. Check out Baselines for truly inspiring bass.

 

Greetings from the North,

I saw Jah Wobble with PIL at a show in suburban Detroit back in the day. He sounded great for the few tunes that they did before the pompas ass on the mic decided he was underwhelmed by the crowd response, and then said something catty and bopped off stage. Go Johnny Go.......

But Jah Wobble's style and sound is still pretty cool.

Rezdog

 

laswell is a killer player, if you've never seen him live, you owe it to yourself to do so. last i saw him he was ripping a black thunderbird bass through a pair of marshall jcm800 heads, plugged into marshall 4x12 cabs and a peavey 1x18. had a pedalboard with dod fx25, and some boss fx. the sound was absolutely huge.
he was plaiyng with john zorn and a sick, sick drummer...not sure what they called the lineup.
as a producer there is definitely the element of quantity over quality imho.... but he's definitely no slouch, nor overrated.

 

Notice Jah always sits down too. His basslines are simple and killer

 

+1
Baselines and Material's Memory Serves were my first introductions to Laswell's bass playing, and they were more than enough to convince me that he was a top-shelf iconoclast who could also groove like a mutha. His playing on Herbie Hancock's "Rockit" and Peter Gabriel/Laurie Anderson's "Excellent Birds" sealed the deal for me.

And then he started producing that relentless litany of utterly boring & directionless music and I had to wonder whether aliens had kidnapped the original player and replaced him with a no-talent douchebag.

 

I think he's a better bassist than producer, and although there's a lot of stuff he's produced well, there is some that I just don't enjoy.

I mean, how much of an actual point is there to taking a miles davis or bob marley song and loading it up with delays and reverbs and so on?

 

jah wobble is awesome to hear live. bass for days...
bill laswell's album with roots tonic is heavy as well.

 

Laswell frustrates the hell out of me. He's got talent but he's inconsistent. You never know what you're getting when buying his stuff. I'm talking about irresistably good versus just plain crap.

His Panthalassa album just kicks ass though...if you like 70's Miles Davis that's a definite gem. Radioaxiom - Dub Transmission is great too.

 

Yes - I saw Bill Laswell and Jah Wobble in Brighton, with a few other name players like Jaki Libezeit of Can and I was really looking forward to it.

But it was awful - too loud, distorted and they just played one chord for 15 minutes - I just couldn't stand it any more and had to walk out - as I did , I realised that a lot of other people were walking out to the bar. Some people were going to wait to see if it changed - but after another 15-20 minutes of the same, we went home disappointed!