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> In a message dated 4/5/02 1:12:57 AM, steve@steve-lawson.co.uk writes: > > >just got this review through from Ed Friedland of Bass Player magazine, > > Congratulations! > > I don't seem to be able to find the review in the most recent BP that I >have > (the April/Mingus issue). Maybe it's in another date. Nor can I find >Andre's > review on your site. But, nevertheless your music is worthy of all the >praise > it's getting. I've only listened to the downloads so far -- I really >need to > get > on the stick and order a CD -- but your work is most impressive. Hi Ted, the review hasn't gone into BP yet (and possibly won't in that exact format) - Ed sent the comments direct to me... My first solo CD was reviewed in the mag, about a year ago... As for Andre's review, here it is - " 'Conversations' finds pianist Jez Carr and bassist/loopist Steve Lawson deftly walking a fine line between new age and avant-garde, drifting from meditative serenity to angular abstraction so smoothly that the seams barely show. With its extended and often reflective feel, the highly-attuned duo improvisations allude to the vintage eras of record labels like ECM or Windam Hill. But Lawson's use of live electronic looping throughout the album is the real wild card here: sometimes injecting traces of ambient, dub, and even post-Warp abstraction into the mix, while other times seamlessly adding a virtual third instrumental voice to the proceedings. We've all heard live performances filtered and chopped through a non-linear post-DJ mentality, but 'Conversations' pulls the remarkable trick of inverting that equation, by placing a choice selection of digital- age flourishes into the overall framework of sensitive, sympathetic, and highly organic instrumental improvisation." ...Mr LaFosse, you definitely have a side career brewing as a writer... :o) > >It's really nice when a review actually provides you with new ways of > >describing what you do that are accurate rather than hyperbolic... :o) > > Yeah. Don't get me started on that particular thread. Heh, heh, heh. My > own CD has continued to get positive reviews since I last posted on the > topic. But, as often as not, even the positive reviewers don't really >"get > it." > Though I have to admit some of their hyperbolae does stroke the ol' ego > in many ways. Indeed it does, but it also breeds a curious contempt for those who heap misguided praise onto your work... or if not contempt, at least bemusement... i had a couple of reviews for the first album that were fantastic (I didn't get any bad ones, but anyway) - too fantastic - my album's quite good but certainly not worth '10/10' by any objective measurement - Kind Of Blue? 10/10, Dolittle? 10/10, Steve McQueen? 10/10, What's Going On? 10/10, Hejira? 10/10... I'm pretty sure that my first solo effort isn't really in that company! :o) It's still worth buying (if albums that were less than perfect weren't worth buying, CD shops would be very small indeed), and is certainly one of the better solo bass CDs out there (believe me, I've heard a lot, and many are unlistenable - it's not without reason that bass soloists are viewed with much suspicion) ...and I'm also very very grateful to everyone who has bought it thus far, and rather chuffed to know that a few people have started playing solo bass as a direct result of hearing it, and a few others have got turned onto other people doing similar things by hearing my stuff first - but that sort of subjective response is different to a journo who hasn't done their homework... ...Which is why when people like Andre and Ed write stuff that even sheds light on the way that I perceive my own music, I cherish it even more... cheers Steve www.steve-lawson.co.uk