Radioaxiom: A Dub Transmission

Bassist and producer Bill Laswell's prolific output tends to blur his projects together in the senses. A Dub Transmission, however, leaps out of this sonic fog. It could've been called Thundering Bass, as he teams up with another denizen of deep bass boom, Jah Wobble. Recalling Laswell's Material album, Hallucination Engine, and to a lesser degree Hear No Evil, A Dub Transmission is a throbbing, shifting fabric of dub bass lines, free improvisation, and sound manipulation. Among the musicians whose performances are mixed and morphed are horn players Nils Petter Molvaer and Graham Haynes, keyboardist Amina Claudine Myers, and percussionists Karsh Kale, Hamid Drake, Sly Dunbar, and Aiyb Dieng. Add in longtime Laswell accomplice guitarist Nicky Skopelitis, and it's a wedding of wild spontaneity, digital composition, global grooves, and electronic moods. Ejigayehu "Gigi" Shebabaw guests on "Alsema Dub," giving the album a more celebratory turn than most of A Dub Transmission's deliriously dark, cyberhallucinations. --John Diliberto