Bill Laswell – Axiom Ambient: Lost In Translation (1994)

September 21, 2020

This is probably the busiest and most involved ambient record that I’ve ever heard! Haha! I suppose its due to the sheer number of ambient producers who create a stunning custom patch and then just put a book on the lower end of the keyboard for 55 minutes and call the resulting dirge a new record. I’m being obtuse of course, but hopefully you get what I mean.

Laswell has pulled together a small world here from his collaborators, some of which are named, others which I’m sure are confined to the obscurity of their source recordings. These are not just ambient sheets of sounds. These are microcosms of life and activity; sweeping movements of atmosphere conjured from world music and that hypnotic mood you get from trance music, but just before the beat kicks in. It’s a long one, but its well worth the journey.