Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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17 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Land of the gods, September 28, 2004
Navel city is a land of its own. Possibly due to the art album cover navel city is located in east asia with lush mountains plenty of eastern religious iconic figures and the statue of david. With a view of water and an industrial city landscape.
This is the first album ive heard from Hoppy Kamiyama (digital president, Slide Geisha, Ass hole box& gram pot and Kiyohiko Semba ( drums, Percussion and electronic drums) I hope we all know laswell ( Bass-effects)
the 1st song Azlo starts with a very ambient structure then melts to a slow jazz dub feel mainly drum and bass are present with sparatic digital ambient sounds and bells. Some light horn work is also present as the jam cuts in and out from style to style and different time signatures. Song clocks in 6:17
2nd song Todes fuge is a bite ambient with light percussion, piano and laswell style bass very badawi style with intense piano fills. 4:09
3rd song Sospirando is an up beat jazz dub with very strong digital sounds and lots of drum filtering/processing.
the 4th song The Desert is the second best song on the album, starts out with a very tribal feel, flutes, ambience and tribal drum set and percussion with dub bass. The song progressivelly changes styles including a very Herbie Hancock 70 fussion psychodelic style with lots of filter minipulation and frequence delays, incredible. Best jazz song ive heard in a long time. Cuts in and out of the jazzy and tribal very badawi style kinda last samurai eastern japaneese style. song is 13:52
5th song Zarathusta is very tribal with crickets and strange electronic sounds with what i think is the geisha which turns to a suttle jazz then to progressivelly more jam bandy 6:10
6th song Sad emission is by far the best song on the album and the longest. Very eastern flutes, Tambura. Slow tribal jazz drums laswell dubinz then continues to the more reminicent structure jazzy latout which swirls into a long tabla and flute with digital delays. beautifle then continues to jamming. 16:19
7th song Parrot Fashions is very ambient with bells trasitional laswell electronic hums. The streets of navel city, your destination is greated with strings, monkeys and birds in a swell of psychopathic koas of beauty and truth.
All in all its a very different approach very jazzy with excellent dub style laswell bass. Some of the best drums around, awesome inegration of the sound structure not to much very light. Excellent tribal themes. Note Some of the jam band stuff sounds a lot like the Broken Vessels soundtrack progressive rock song but an entirelly different band.
This is one of the greats for laswell never to be forgotten for we should salute our president of navel city mr Kamiyama, Mr. Laswell head of foreign afairs, and Kiyohiko Semba head of landscape structure. I would love to live in navel city its always changing, theirs always psychonavigated rythems constantelly altering the landscape and perception. Plenty of island feel and room for all who will except their right of passage
fans of Bill Frisell, Medeski-martin-&wood,Jah Wobble, Herbie Hancocks 69-74 period, Miled Davis 69-74 era, John Zorn, Badawi, Pharoah Sanders, Equations of eternity (EOE).
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Genre-bending jazz / electronica from Bill Laswell.., February 17, 2008
This is not your typical Bill Laswell venture, but it is one of the most unique productions he's been involved with, and arguably one of the best. Although there are distinct elements of free jazz present in several of the pieces, the majority of the album is tightly structured, with some of the most phenomenal drumming I've ever heard (courtesy of Kiyohiko Semba).
I feel that the term "defies categorization" is bandied about very loosely these days, but this album comes damn close to being worthy of it. Part jazz, part funk, part electronica; both none and all of these things at once. I'm probably making the music sound far more pretentious than it is, but it's genuinely difficult to assign genres to this record. There is an influence of Laswell's time working with Buckethead here (namely on Colma), but the music is far too influenced by jazz to be lumped in with it.
In essence, if you're a fan of Bill Laswell, Japanese jazz / electronica or the avant-garde, this is well worth your time. There should be some samples going on up above, so check it out for yourself. The cover art is quite reminiscent of Miles Davis' Bitches Brew, and as far as originality and creativity goes, A Navel City is certainly on par with it.
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0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Pretty Vacuous, May 27, 2008
Just aural trash ... I'm a big Laswell fan, but this is a project that didn't work at all. There's no there there, and the playing is irritating.
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by Bill Laswell 
