Thursday 21 May 2009

Bill Laswell - City Of Light


1997 Bill Laswell album, a combination of field recordings he made in India, and collaborations with Trilok Gurtu on tablas, Tetsu Inoue and Coil, amongst others. Also featuring spoken word by Lori Carson, in varying amounts from track to track. Unashamedly attempting to access the mystic and spiritual, this could have been a cheese-fest. Instead, Laswell reveals his mastery of texture and space, and the ethnic chanting is kept to a tasteful minimum. Lori Carson's voice works perfectly, and the album hangs together as a whole, despite the long list of contributors.
A couple of the tracks consist of ambient textures, Carson's voice, and ethnic percussion. The last sounds more like a typical Bill Laswell track, with a thundering dub bass line. The real gem is Kála, the track featuring Coil. A total trip, which has soundtracked many an altered state for me.

Mediafire

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Awesome, thank you! I had this on cd long ago, but we all know how crappy cds break down and get scratached it is nice to be able to hear it again.