BILL LASWELL & PETE NAMLOOK

OUTLAND

  1/  From the Earth To the Ceiling              (Laswell,Namlook)             62.00

          Recorded at Klanglabor, Frankfurt, Germany
          Mongolian voices and instruments recorded in Ulaan Bator, Mongolia, August
            1994 by Oz Fritz and Nicky Skopelitis
          Produced by Peter Kuhlmann

Bill Laswell: sounds; Pete Namlook: sounds.

          1994 - FAX  +49-69/450464 (Germany), PW 19 (CD)
          2001 - Ambient World (Germany), AW 022 (CD)

REVIEWS :

This is one of those discs that seems obvious and suspiciously simple when you first listen to it. Some time passes, you decide to give it another try and the second time it knocks you down. It doesn't even sound like the same album, or maybe you're not the same this time around. At least that's what happened to me. Outland is at once deep, dark, evocative, and foreboding. I've heard the argument that some of these "ambient" pieces are needlessly stretched out when they really could have been edited down to 20 minutes or less. The only track on Outland, "From the Earth to the Ceiling," is something you want a full hour of. Sustained Mongolian chants braided with warm synthetic waves, realtime, as Namlook likes them. We go through several stages which are seemlessly blended together. This is minimal beatless instrumentalism, separate yet interactive, that fills one hour with bass, waves, and voices (sourced in Ulaan Bator courtesy of someone named Nicky and Oz). Bill Laswell seems to be controlling some organic bass textures with the help of his trusty envelope filter, while Namlook controls the synth textures. The full composition is symmetrically designed, giving the impression of recession and approach, or ascent and descent. Right in the middle, acting as a kind of aural navigation buoy, is a mysterious eastern melody which only lasts for about 90 seconds. A post to the ambient list in April of '96 by Taro Tsuzuki says this is a segment of a 19th century composition, "Koujou no Tsuki," ('Moon Over Ruined Castle' was the translation offered) by one Rentaro Taki. Here is a rough description of the different stages that the disc goes through, listed along with the appropriate times :

0 - 5.35 : Deep, guttural, thunderous chanting. Synth lull, distant voices 6.09 - : Vocal harmonic layers
14.14 - : Ascending & descending pitchbend organics
18:40 - : Harmonic voices re-emerge with added texture
22:26 - : Synthetic synth notes are introduced
24:00 - : The medley begins, bob your head if you must
26:30 - : Laswellian envelope filters, more voices
35:00 - : Rhythm disperses, Koujou no Tsuki marks the halfway point
42:15 - : Vocal harmonic layers re-emerge
43:00 - : Pitchbend organics
56:00 - end: Reprise of the thunderous chants

no@h

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_Outland_ is one of my favorite FAX cds. It is one of the more "out there" releases from this label. The opening chants are very, very creepy... heavyduty... overwhelming. When Pete's analog synth starts to drift out of the voices my head starts to droop from the sheer power of this music. The bass is awesome, especially on a LOUD system (typical FAX -- thanks Pete). Comparisons would include some parts of _Organic Cloud_, the Gyuoto Monks, lots of literature by H.P. Lovecraft. This CD makes me think I'm somewhere high up in the Himalayas, and have just downed a heavy-duty DMT-based psychedelic drink with some *very strange* monks. As the wind whips around the shelter and the blizzard settles in, the visions start to get out of control...

Wallace Winfrey