Material - Hallucination Engine

Bill Laswell is known both as a studio wizard producer and a sonic chameleon. On this, his third under the Material moniker, he assembles a vast array of varied talents to create one of his better recordings of the past decade. This review was initially written in 2002 for Intune.

Artist: Bill Laswell/Material
Album: Hallucination Engine
1994
Axiom/Island Records

Bill Laswell is prolific to say the least; usually putting out anywhere from 2 to 5 recordings a year (as producer, multi-instrumentalist, remixologist, arranger, or many times all of the above at once), and never the same one twice. From the avant punk-jazz with Peter Brotzmann to funk, world beat and trance hybrids and full remix albums of Bob Marley, Santana, Miles Davis and Trojan Records. There is very little this low-key New Yorker will not try, and the running army of prime time talent that consisently works with him in various seemingly incongruent settings is testimony to this.

Hallucination Engine is no exception, as it features an armada of a band: Wayne Shorter (Miles Davis, Weather Report), Bernie Worrell (P-Funk, Mos Def), Bootsy Collins (P-Funk), Shankar, Sly Dunbar (Sly & Robbie), Jonas Hellborg (Tony Williams, John McLaughlin), and Trilok Gurtu, not to mention several other percussionists and guitarists and a special stopover by William S. Burroughs.

Now, such a group could easily turn into a sloppy cacophony or a simple, dumb parade of 'names' , but Bill creates an album full of fluid motion and excellent arrangements of space.

The album starts with Black Light a Laswell/Shorter composition that is -compositionally- fairly reminiscent of Shorter during his tenure with Miles' quintet during the late 50s-early 60s; lyrical, spacious, and flowing soprano sax over a liquid drum loop, and complimeneted by solid basswork from Laswell (who occasionally sounds like Jah Wobble, and vice versa). Over the rest of the cd, one can hear various long-form (outside of Words of Advice all tracks clock between 7:30 and 13:00 minutes in length) travels across a worldly landscape that mixes dub with Sino inflences, spine-crushing funk with tablas and atmospheric synth washes. Electric Sitars and congas mix with fretless bass, B-3 Organs, and various beats and samples massaged into a firm but smooth sound. However, it never gets messy or seems forced. The whole album flows at a leisurely pace - not too fast on the run, and not so slow as to induce narcolepsy.

A great highlight is The Hidden Agenda/Naima which starts as a sparse percusion track, and quickly builds violin, Arabic vocals, and several guitars with a Bootsy bass burst hither and yon, turning the song inside out through several twists before reaching a stride covering the great jazz standard about John Coltrane's wife. The one track with narraration by Naked Lunch author William Burroughs in interesting, but somewhat detracts from the overall pace of the album, and its too bad it is set in the middle of the album.

Overall Hallucination Engine is an exceptionally coherent sonic sculpture with a well produced and mixed sound that is neither pretentious or underdeveloped. Considering the calibre of the talent, the performances are understated and well framed, instead of flashy, with the mixed set of elements never conflicting and is a lush offering from one of modern musics true iconoclasts.