Quotes by Bill Laswell

• 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.
• 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.
• The atmosphere defines the environment of sound.
• Sound comes out of a life experience.
• Records are just moments of achievement. They're like receipts for work done. Time goes on and people keep playing music.
• Computers and electronic music are not the opposite of the warm human music. It's exactly the same.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• People who play conventional music are threatened by electronica and don't consider it to be as valuable as what they do.