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Sunday, January 21, 2018

Help save Bill Laswell's studio


From Oz Fritz's blog: "Bill Laswell at the board with pioneering turntablist DXT."

Here is something interesting for those of you into music: A GoFundMe campaign has been launched to save Bill Laswell's Orange Music Studio. 

The page explains, "Bassist, iconic producer, and sonic visionary Bill Laswell becomes the latest legendary talent to fall victim to the vagaries of these crazy times. Beset by health problems while trying to navigate this harsh and uncertain economic landscape, Laswell is struggling to maintain Orange Music, the legendary New Jersey studio that he as helmed for the last 20 years. He is putting the call out to all fans, friends, and fellow artists alike: If you can help, please do so now. No contribution is too small."

The campaign was called to my attention by Adrian Reynolds, who writes, "Musician/producer Bill Laswell has created some extraordinary music, and his collaborators included William Burroughs. The Illuminati are also referenced one way and another in some of his work, and I'm pretty sure there's a RAW sample in one of his ambient tracks."

I recognized Laswell's name as a longtime fan of Oz Fritz's blog. Oz is a music producer who has long been associated with Laswell. See for example this post. Oz in fact participated in the recording session with William Burroughs, and you can read about that, too.


Cover for one of Laswell's albums. Oz Fritz was the engineer for the session.

1 comment:

Oz Fritz said...

Thank-you very much for posting this. i didn't know about the campaign until now. It's a great studio with long history going back to Frankie Vali and the Four Seasons. Jethro Tull and Aerosmith also have recorded there.

Laswell has always been incredibly generous with the studio letting independent musicians use it for very low rates or for nothing at all. It was his policy for a long time to let friends use it for nothing except for the engineer's expense. More info is on the go fund me link. I'm pretty sure the campaign will succeed, they've already raised 1/3rd of it in 2 days. I noticed that David Shoemaker who heads up the A.'. A.'. in Sacramento is one donor.