Bill Laswell (born February 12, 1955, Salem, Illinois, and raised in Albion, Michigan) is an American bassist, producer and record label owner. Laswell has been involved in hundreds of recordings with many collaborators from all over the world. Laswell's music draws upon many different genres, most notably funk, various world music, jazz, dub and ambient styles. He has also played or produced music from the noisier, more aggressive end of the rock spectrum, such as hardcore punk and metal.

Always one to be courting controversy due to his alleged radical treatment of music, Laswell released two albums of remixes from dead artists - Bob Marley's Dreams of Freedom on Axiom and Miles Davis Panthalassa. The first contained airy, ambient dub translations of some of Marley's Island catalog, largely sans Marley's voice. Chris Blackwell, largely the man responsible for bringing Marley to the masses in the 1970s, requested the album as part of a planned series of remix albums by various producers who were rooted in the reggae/dub tradition. Blackwell's departure from Island killed any further albums.  For Panthalassa, Laswell took the tapes from Miles' "electric period" and re-imagined them, the impetus for the project being that the original releases were just mixes made by Teo Macero from long in-studio sessions. Nothing originally released was necessarily exactly what was done in the studio, but rather a cut-up and remix to begin with. Needless to say, critic and fan responses varied wildly, with Laswell and Macero conducting a public feud in the media.  The late 1990s saw two other major changes. As noted before, Chris Blackwell left Island Records. Although he took the Axiom imprint with him to his new Palm Pictures label, the back catalog stayed with Island. Many of the albums are now out of print, and efforts to obtain master recordings and new distribution have been unsuccessful. The other change came in the form of studio space. Laswell, seeing that Greenpoint had turned into a sort of living space for hangers-on, moved his studio to West Orange, New Jersey, calling it Orange Music Sound Studios.

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