It’s quite difficult to describe any of Bill Laswell’s recordings. Especially when talking about the newest collaboration project that grew out of his work with Mike Sopko and Tyshawn Sorey. “On Common Ground” combines all the different elements that unite Sopko, Laswell and Sorey.
But where best to start describing this particular record ? Laswell’s bass-parts, the guitar passages by Mike Sopko or the rhythmic structures of Tyshawn Sorey?
None of these.
“On Common Ground” is a rare example of how a collective of artists reaches a practically telepathic type of organics. And just like all the masters the result of their work becomes something created on the verge of styles and compositional structures.
“Parascience”, “Equation”, “Incantation”, mixed echoes and rawness of improvisational music in a quite surrealistic way. It's impossible to figure out any sort of climax or breaking point in the recording. Improvisational components combined with different structural changes allows them to not develop one particular idea on the record, but build each track using the same elements in a different way, with different musical accents. Whether this is the raw and apocalyptic “Upward Collapse” or the keith-levene-type-of-guitar-landscapes Mike Sopko explores in “Incantation”.