Top 21 Quotes & Sayings by Bill Laswell

What I'm dealing with is sound. I don't pretend to be dealing with music. I'm just dealing with sound elements, textures and sounds.

I put projects together. I put people together.

Miles Davis fully embraced possibilities and delved into it. He was criticized heavily from the jazz side. He was supposed to be part of a tradition, but he didn't consider himself part of a tradition.

Records are just moments of achievement. They're like receipts for work done. Time goes on and people keep playing music.

Engineering producers who don't play and have technology as a background may be the reason why there's a lot of cold non-musical music, for lack of a better description.

The atmosphere defines the environment of sound.

Sound comes out of a life experience.

In all the music that deals with experimental repetition, drum and bass, dub, various kinds of house music, there's always been a quality of atmosphere and ambience.

I've never used ethnic music as decoration for profit.

Computers and electronic music are not the opposite of the warm human music. It's exactly the same.

People who play conventional music are threatened by electronica and don't consider it to be as valuable as what they do.

I think everything's experimental whether you like it or not. I think that people who do generic pop are experimenting with cliches. It's no less than I am experimenting with noise or unknown music - until you say, 'This is my song, or this is my composition' - it's all experimental, whether you like it or not.

Nothing was a style first. Everything started as an idea. A guy did something with an idea. Someone copied him. Some copied all of them and it became trendy and then it became a style.

People are afraid of things they don't understand. They don't know how to relate. It threatens their security, their existence, their career, image.

I think if you look at exactly where you are, you can't really focus without looking back and forward at the same time.

If you listen to really deep ambient records that don't move too much, very still records, long after those records are finished, you might find yourself listening for hours to the sound of the room.

I don't think technology is viable unless the person applying it has something to say.

I got into dub a long time ago. I was into dub before I even had any interest in reggae or Jamaican songs, Bob Marley, or any of those established artists. I just thought it was such an unusual sound.

Obviously, it's had a huge effect on repetitive music or dance music or house music. Ambient in the last ten years has infiltrated into all those repetitive musics. I don't know what part it plays in pop necessarily but I'm sure there's some connection. But in all the music that deals with experimental repetition, drum and bass, dub, various kinds of house music, there's always been a quality of atmosphere and ambience. I think it's infiltrated that pretty heavily.

Ambient means the natural center or atmosphere of a space. All music has that in it- a space or center. I think it just means the atmosphere or what defines the environment of sound and maybe removing the more destructive, harsh elements and harder rhythmic elements and you get down to the stillness that's inherent. There's an ambient quality in every sound. You may have to enhance that to hear it or bring it out in a different way but there is that in every environmental sound.

People are afraid of things they don't understand.