Divination - Distill

I don't understand how Bill Laswell names things. Divination has been the "band" name he's used for a drone/dub project that's been just him by himself and, at other times, collaborations with people from his usual stable (Buckethead, Nicky Skopelitis, Robert Musso, etc) and with entirely different bands (including Jah Wobble, DXT, Mick Harris and many others). For this double album, though, Divination appears to be listed on the cover as the band name, though the content is a compilation. I don't get it, and maybe I don't need to. It could be that Divination only refers to the mood... something that in the 1990s was called "isolationist", a dark electronic drone with nods toward languid cough-syrup dub. On "Distill", you get long solo yawns by Bill Laswell, his regular collaborator Anton Fier, FAX Records staples Pete Namlook and Testu Inoue, Thomas Koner (Async Sense), Haruomi Hosono (of Yellow Magic Orchestra), Paul Schutze, and Mick Harris.

disc 1
disc 2 


kingpossum,  6 October 2017 at 15:13  

Thank you for the post. I've often been perplexed by Mr. Laswell's project monikers too, albeit briefly--because I just dig whatever he does so I don't dwell on it much. Getting a strong handle on his project naming might spoil the fun a little for me, actually. I like mercurial artists categorically (e.g., Neil Young releases Chrome Dreams II without having released Chrome Dreams), so Laswell and Zorn are constants for me.

Thanks as always for the ongoing brilliance that is Bleak Bliss.