Comments for Material, Hallucination Engine

One of the most intense albums on the market. I highly recommend it!

I have mixed feelings about this one. The trouble with Laswell's music is that after establishing crisp, killer grooves he does little in the way of musical development and pieces are always too static. His approach has worn quite thin on those of us who were listening to him for years & years. On this one he updates his concept to a dark, modern sound related to "ambient dub" mixed with the exotic sensibilities he's been exploring. I think that track 3 is awesome depending on your mood, reminiscent of Holger Czukay's stuff. "Mantra" is interesting though I wish more were done with the groove after setting it up. Same goes for track 6. Some of the rest is really boring. This record's too diverse and unusual to dismiss out of hand, but I think that there are a lot of other people out there making more enjoyable music using these same concepts.

Since this is my first disc into Laswell's world of music, so i'll tend to biased towards the side that this is one great disc. But generally speaking, the disc is quite accessible compared to Laswell's other work under the name Material. For instance, the groove of Word of Advice and Cucumber Slumber had been heard elsewhere (Word of Advice is one of Jeff Beck's tune on Blow by Blow and MC 900ft Jesus sampled the breakdown riff of C.S. in Truth is Out of Style from Josef Zwainful). But that does not take away the intensity of the disc. Although I've heard comment such as Kenny G's for thinking people (heaven forbid!), the disc still kicks. I spent three months in Hong Kong this year and just listening to this disc while watching the city is one of the most surrealistic thing I've ever done. Better than drugs. But musically, it's got a lot of things and while they gelled, they may get distracted for not being developed into great pieces.

"Cucumber Slumber" was actually first done by Weather report, by the way, in the mid-70''s. I think this version samples the old one - hard to tell since Wayne Shorter plays on both albums & could possibly be replaying his part.

This is one of the best album ever made!