Material

Material ranks among the highest-profile endeavors undertaken by the ceaselessly active bassist and producer Bill Laswell. Long before hip-hop or world music reached mainstream awareness, the band forged an innovative blend of jazz, funk, and punk while folding in those additional strands. Its original configuration, assembled in 1979, featured Laswell alongside multi-instrumentalist Michael Beinhorn and drummer Fred Maher, each already a fixture in downtown New York City’s experimental scene. Together with Kramer and several other musicians, the unit supported Gong’s Daevid Allen throughout his New York appearances, an engagement that produced the album About Time under the New York Gong name. Following Material’s own first release, Temporary Music, the roster expanded to encompass Sonny Sharrock, Henry Threadgill, and Fred Frith, a development that led to the 1981 album Memory Serves. The 1982 set One Down, the group’s concluding release before a roughly ten-year break, showcased an array of contributors extending from Nile Rodgers to a then-unknown Whitney Houston and delivered a pronounced strain of avant funk. Laswell reconvened the project in 1989 for the atmospheric Seven Souls, which prominently featured spoken-word contributions from William S. Burroughs. Returning to earlier soul-oriented impulses, 1991’s The Third Power enlisted Herbie Hancock, Sly & Robbie, Maceo Parker, and the Jungle Brothers. After Hallucination Engine appeared in 1994, another four-year interval elapsed before the remix collection The Road to the Western Lands surfaced, with Intonarumori arriving in 1999.