Bill Laswell & Pete Namlook
Outland
UK COLD SPRING RECORDS CSR327BX 6 x CD BOX (2023)
Between 1994 and 2007, the American bassist-producer Laswell and German electronics genius Peter Kuhlmann released five full-length albums in their “Outland” series – all of them originally appearing on Kuhlmann’s own Fax +49-69/450464 label in Frankfurt, and then reissued on its sub-label Ambient World. Now here they are again in a box set, packaged with suitable “outer space” planet and moon imagery, plus a bonus disc called “Blackland”, a set of extra drones created after the fact by Laswell. I suppose the “fact” I’m referring to is the death in 2012 of Kuhlmann, and the way that culture evolves at its current rate means that these pioneering ambient records are currently passing into musical history as the benchmarks they clearly are. It’s been useful for this listener to hear this music which passed me by at the time, and to absorb in a short space of time the fruits of what was evidently a very lengthy and deliberative creative partnership.
This particular collaboration seems to have come about almost by accident; New Yorker Laswell was already a well-established persona by 1994, and (in my verdict) his 1980s work with Material and Last Exit is unique and powerful; he found ways to splice up funk and dub with free improvisation, as shown by his work with Brötzmann, Bailey, Zorn, Frith, and Sharrock. At some point he “discovered” the Fax label, and in the mid 1980s started to sample the music of Kuhlmann – also called Pete Namlook – into his own studio concoctions. This led to a phone call from Frankfurt, the outcome of which could have gone either way; one option was legal action, the other was to collaborate. They chose collaboration. This alone is an inspiring part of the story; artists are often the first to find a creative solution to resolve any tensions or problems. It’s only the lawyers, and the big money men, who want to jump straight into litigation whenever possible.
For me personally this set doesn’t really start kicking in until Outland 3, originally released in 1996, and adorned with such poetic titles as ‘Keeper of the Purple Twilight’, the best title Sun Ra never penned. On these four lengthy tracks we’ve got dub mixing, beats, samples, very low frequency bass sounds, and much use of architectural “space” for maximal tension, all of which tends to cement the mysterious ambient drones together into interesting alcoves, corners, and cupolas. I especially like the distant signals arriving from alien zones on ‘Definition of Life’, voice samples of astronauts and NASA technicians (which amazingly doesn’t even seem dated now), and its ingenious cross-rhythms, which highlights that the duo didn’t really have a drummer as far as I know, but their mastery of rhythm appears to be a given. That said, the preceding item Outland 2 does have the African music samples (I assume) over the six parts of its ‘African Virus’ odyssey, along with the field recordings of voices and general African ambience, plus the lengthy third track with its indefatigable beats and judicious loops, managing to pass on an utterly unfamiliar sensation to the listener even when human elements are recognisable. Outland 4, originally from 2000, also excites with further African cross-pollinations and max-strength dub techniques; rich and replete with heavy bass on ‘East Meets West’, then experimental and elliptic on ‘Our Small Blue World’ with its microscopic particles coalescing into a miniature constellation. Just one instance of how these two fellows could build an instrumental full of snap and tension even when working on this miniaturist scale.
If there’s a trajectory of development across this impressive corpus, so far it seems to be leading in the direction of the sort of of intense dub-inflected beat electronica that’s so well defined (for me) on Kevin Martin’s Macro Dub Infection comps, of which the first appeared in 1995. If it’s the pure uncut “dark ambient” drone-a-thon mode you’re after though, you need to go back to Outland 1, this duo’s first release from 1994, presenting ‘From The Earth to the Ceiling’ in 12 parts. It’s mostly profound and hollowed-out electronic drone, but with a richness that is noticeably absent from any washed-out ambient sickness released in the last 15-18 years, and showing the full-bodied black-as-pitch liquid gold that could be pulled from the bass and synths of Laswell and Namlook, in a seemingly inexhaustible supply. While most modern “dark ambient” can’t wait to pile on the menace, or at least project an aura of terror, this music strikes quite another emotional register, and is somehow unique in a way I can’t fathom; it almost captures a sense of the loneliness and infinitude of an astronaut drifting across the galaxies, if that was indeed the intention. Well crafted and meticulous, and informed by a very unhurried compositional sense; the music takes its time arriving at its destination, if there is one, and we must stop at every detour along the way.
I haven’t quite made it to discs 5 and 6 of this “voyage through rarely charted sonic dimensions” (selon the press release), but I hope to have passed on to the reader a flavour of the music and the extent of the endeavours of this tireless duo. There does indeed seem to be a coherence and sense of purpose that endures across the entire set and across several years, suggesting that listening to the box in one session would pass on a considerable benefit to the listener. Those intrigued may want to revisit, or investigate, the five Psychonavigation releases from this duo that appeared at roughly the same time; or the even more extensive 11-part series The Dark Side of The Moog, which seems to have started as a team-up between Namlook and the famed kosmische explorer Klaus Schulze, although Laswell started getting his oar in by Part IV of the series. Perhaps all of these are also lined up for reissue by Cold Spring. From 15 January 2024.