Against Empire: an Interview with Bill Laswell

 

 

 

The Interview

By Paul Acquaro and David Cristol 

Free Jazz Blog: I'd like to start asking how are you doing? We know that you've been dealing with some health and other issues with the studio, but at the same time, you're keen on writing another chapter.

Bill Laswell: Well, yeah, I think I can get one more.

FJB: What would you like to see in there?

BL: I just want to continue. There's a lot of records that I've done that need to come out. We have to work on that. And I have wanted to do a lot of drum and bass records without so much music. Just rhythm. There are a few key people that I would work with and want to work with. But again, there's quite a few things in the can that should come out soon.

FJB: About some recent and upcoming projects. In 2020 you started getting a dazzling number of unreleased live recordings out there, from different eras and bands that you had organized.

BL: Yeah, that's still going on. It's on Bandcamp. Why do you do music in the first place? It's so people can hear it. And there is a kind of base of people that want to hear it, so, you know, I keep digging it out and we put it on Bandcamp and there's a subscription that gives access to it. You can get all that stuff from digital places.

FJB: Yeah, the subscription model is interesting. How has that been working for you?

BL: I don't monitor it so much, but I think it's going OK. It's not really selling because the thing is, it's more to do with people getting access to things that they would normally not have heard. I'm glad that people hear it and it's a good document and it measures history in a way. I like the idea.

FJB: How many recordings would you say you have unreleased?

BL: Not many. I have the things that are finished and that will be coming out soon. That's unreleased as of now. But I don't keep a lot of things around that are unreleased. I try to use all.

FJB: As you have gone back to the vaults, were there any projects that you heard differently than you remembered?

BL: All of them, you know, it’s a long time ago. There's a lot of music there and a lot of live recordings. I don't go back to my vault because I don't have a vault. And I don't know how to go back, so…

FJB: I’d like to ask about an upcoming album with The Last Poets...

BL: It should come out soon. Pharoah Sanders played on it. I've worked with The Last Poets for many years. A few years ago, I said let's make a record and go back to the original idea which is just rhythm, percussion and voice and then add a few sounds from Pharoah and Graham Haynes. And that's how this happened. The Poets have done a lot of releases, with bands and one was reggae, one was kind of fusion… We did one that was heavily funk-influenced, Holy Terror, back in the 90s. I wanted to go back to the original source, reel it in and bring it back to this kind of African concept, rhythm and voice for the most part.

 

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