This is the first single from the upcoming album, Smoke and Glass by Alex Hass & Bill Laswell.
The collaboration between musician/artist Alex Haas and bassist/producer Bill Laswell is an homage to the organized chaos and flux of their changing city. NYC has been their creative muse since the late 70’s when they met, working their way up in the music business and recording in studios such as Media Sound and Power Station. Their first session together, with Alex as assistant engineer and Bill producing, was for Bootsy Collins’ deep pocket dub funk – a precursor to the duos mutual styles and musical symbiosis.
Over the years, the two producers went on to work with a bucket list of who’s who, including David Bowie, PIL, The Ramones, Prince, Brian Eno and MotorHead, assisting on Grammy winning sessions for U2’s album, All That You Can’t Leave Behind and the megahit Eric Clapton song “Tears in Heaven.” While they worked diligently on crafting superb work for marquee acts, they also made time to hone in on their own serious yet approachable hybrid of Ambient Dub, World, Jazz and 90’s Trip Hop. “Nostalgia is in fashion at the moment, with a definite resurgence of interest in the 90’s,” Haas asserts. “I never stopped liking that era.”
Smoke and Glass follows their 2018 release Nowstalgia. The majority of the new album was recorded at Treehouse Studios in Paris as well as all around NYC and in restaurants in Morocco and living rooms and kitchens in South East Asia. The recordings pull from a variety of musical influences, from Sly and Robbie to Miles Davis. But the dominating style is clearly the innovative British Trip Hop pioneered by bands like Massive Attack, who melded their influences into a distinctly urban vibe.
