Material - 1982 - One Down

Material

1982

One Down

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01. Take A Chance (4:31)

02. I'm The One (5:25)

03. Time Out (4:52)

04. Let Me Have It All (5:23)

05. Come Down (4:43)

06. Holding On (4:40)

07. Memories (3:58)

08. Don't Lose Control (4:18)

Total time 37:50

Bonus track 0n 1992 & 1997 reissues:

09. Bustin' Out (8:03)

- Michael Beinhorn / synths (Prophet 5, Oberheim OBXa), sequencer, tapes, vocoder, Roland drum machine, percussion

- Bill Laswell / basses, Fx

With:

- Nona Hendryx / lead (1,9) & backing (4) vocals

- R. Bernard Fowler / lead & backing vocals (2,5)

- Noris Night / lead vocals (4)

- B.J. Nelson / lead vocals (1,4,6)

- Whitney Houston / lead vocals (7)

- Thi-Linh Le / voice (8)

- Jean Karakos / voice (8)

- Nicky Skopelitis / guitar (1,6) voice (8)

- Nile Rogers / guitar (2,5)

- Fred Frith / guitar (3)

- Ronald Drayton / guitar (4,6,9)

- Michael Beinhorn / synthesizers

- Raymond Jones / Yamaha CP-70B electric grand piano (2,7)

- Oliver Lake / tenor & alto saxophones (5)

- Archie Shepp / tenor saxophone (7)

- Bill Laswell / basses

- J.T. Lewis / drums (1,3,6)

- Tony Thompson / drums (2,5,8)

- Yogi Horton / drums (4,7)

- Fred Maher / drums (9)

- Daniel Ponce / bongos (2,8)

- Nicky Marrero / timbales & bells (1,6), snare (3)

The tale of Material encompasses the story arcs of two different entities, New York at the beginning of the 80s, where musicians uptown were cross pollinating punk, funk, the remnants of disco, jazz, world beat, and more into a stew that resulted in great tracks by The Contortions, Konk, ESG, and Material. The other tale is one of session bassist Bill Laswell, who moved to New York in the late 70s and began a meteoric rise that resulted in him being a fixture on the NY vanguard for several years, and would eventually lead him higher before he split off from reality entirely and began following his own path.

Bill Laswell has had his fingers in many pies over the years, but his most significant came early on. His first big gig was supplying supple and ominous basslines for Brian Eno's Ambient 4 album, on the solid opener, "Lizard Point," a track that also featured Material producer Michael Beinhorn. But Material was where Laswell first established how omnivorous he could be. The first Material album, Memory Serves, was a piece of fusion that featured some really heavy grooves ("Memory Serves," "Disappearing," and "Upriver" are the songs that you really need to hear) and excessive fusion wankery on equal measure. The lineup on the album was simply astounding, featuring, besides Laswell, Sonny Sharrock, Air saxophonist Henry Threadgill, and former Henry Cow guitar maestro Fred Frith. Bill dramatically revamped the lineup for album two, accurately titled One Down, bringing in Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards from Chic, Beinhorn, and a young singer named Whitney frigging Houston for vocals. After One Down, the decade of the 1980s became an excersise in "six degrees of Bill Laswell." He popped up to do production work for Mick Jagger's She's The Boss, an album Keith Richards likened to Mein Kampf in that "everyone had it but no one read (listened to) it." The Golden Palominos were another project spearheaded by Laswell and drummer Anton Fier, though they ended up doing their best work in the 1990s. He brought Sly & Robbie together with Grandmaster Flash for an omnivorous jams session on the Rhythm Killers album, where he first established his penchant for bringing in players from completely disparate musical genres and countries, and putting them together for one massive super session. In the 90s, he continued to work like a madman, playing in the supergroup Praxis with a hot ng guitarist named Buckethead and Bernie Worrell. His explorations into dub music became more and more pronounced, as well as ambient and drum n bass projects. But somehow, along the way, Laswell's name began to become far less respected within the rock hinterland. His genre excisions were known for being bloodless excerises in trend-hopping, and his super sessions eventually turned into Laswell taking the best parts out of all the music he loved from around the world, putting their disparate components into a single container, and making the mixture bland and uninteresting. Simon Reynolds said it, perhaps quite harshly, but also best, when he gave Laswell the "lifetime underachievement award," asking "has this man ever done anything of consequence?" I have no idea what he's doing now. Probably working on an album of dub remixes of ":Blue Jay Way."

Actually, a dub remix of "Blue Jay Way" would be kind of cool. But I digress.

On the surface, this album might just seem like another instance of Laswell taking a genre, disco (well, post-disco), and injecting his own DNA into it to make it completely bloodless and boring, as some would argue he did with trip hop on the Golden Palominos' This Is How It Feels (I would argue against that though, I like This Is How It Feels despite some very, very obvious flaws). The music here is blatantly trashy and commercial sounding in a plastic way that makes it seem as though the music is meant to sit in one's ear, or meant to be danced to without a second thought. I'm going to have to break firmly from the pack here, the pack that gave this such a brutally low rating on RYM. This album ruled on the first listen, and I acknowledge that this album sounds like a completely soulless product of a music major wanting to try his hand at something commercial. Think of today, when hyper-talented collectives such as Vulfpeck attempt to write pop and soul songs, and though the band is talented, the songs come out like you are listening to them through glass, simply because the band can't feign any emotional involvement in anything that they are singing. And that's the case here. But its one thing to have a bunch of random music majors, it's quite another to have Nile Rodgers and Whitney fucking Houston backing you up.

I even like the least overtly groovy tracks here, "Take A Chance" and "Time Out." Yeah, the cheesy 80s production flourishes abound in these tracks. "Take A Chance" is powered by a booming, unpleasant, robotic drum pattern, and the vocals are run through some sort of machine, to be as robotic as possible, but the song is so awkward that hating it just seems futile. And "Time Out" has that great synth pattern that pops up around 45 seconds in and continually throughout the song. We've got a ballad as well, sung by Whitney as opposed to Nona Hendryx, who provides the majority of the vocals on the album. Its a cover of a Hugh Hopper-era Soft Machine song called "Memories," and it's absolutely gorgeous. Robert Christgau called it one of the most beautiful ballads ever, and while I wouldn't go that far, its still and amazing performance and I'm glad its here. And the rest, well, its all so funky it positively HURTS. "I'm The One" has those wiry funk chords driving the chorus (and it was later covered by a forgotten acid jazz act called D-Train to much less magnificent effect), and the chorus of "Hold On" makes use of crunchy guitars that manage to help the song rather than hurt it. But the song that really sets the album on fire is, of course, "Bustin Out." Yes, the guitar riff is a blatant rewrite of "Train In Vain," the band sets up a groove so unstoppable that they kick it for eight minutes, and I still don't get enough. Like the rest of the album, Laswell stays in the low tones of his bass, preferring to be a deep presence rather than take front and center, Nona howls out the lyrics with the utmost conviction that seems to have been forever lost when the 80s died out, the part in the middle where everyone drops out but the groove in order to build the song band up is phenomenal...wow. This is one of the most perfect dance songs ever released, and I don't dance at all. It's one of the most addictive songs ever.

So yeah, for a brief moment, Bill Laswell managed to hit that sweet spot that allows a virtuosic outsider to intrude on an established form of art and bend it to his will, creating a masterpiece. Bill would do some decent work later on in his career (Praxis has some good songs, such as the wild "Interface/Stimulation Loop" on their debut, This Is How It Feels from The Golden Palominos ism pretty consistent, but Rhythm Killers is one of the most unpleasant experiences of the 80s. Why Christgau gave that one an A I have no idea), but remember him this way.

Well, the last one sounded like an insane, once-in-a-lifetime jam session with every musician contributing to the madness, but this... this sounds like "Michael Beinhorn and Bill Laswell make a dance-pop record".

A really great dance-pop record! Like, they've definitely traded Max's Kansas City for Studio 54, but that actually works out great for them, this is a great slab of mean, nocturnal disco. Be sure to listen to the version that has "Breakin' Out" on it!

Also, yes: Whitney Houston is here. In her first ever recorded appearance! And she sounds good. Like, Whitney Houston had a good voice. Who would have thought?