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Album Details

• Artist: Gigi
• Album: Illuminated Audio
• Label: Palm Pictures
• Year of Release: 2003
• ME Rating:
• Reviewed by: dscanland on 2003-05-13

Put out a successful worldbeat album and what happens next? Bill Laswell takes it and manipulates it (or some other DJ). That's how labels like Six Degrees keep the releases coming out. This is good for two reasons: the first is that it brings music like Gigi to a world that wouldn't normally hear her and the second is that it sometimes breathes new life into a quality world release. In this case, Palm Pictures succeeds at both. Bill Laswell helped out Gigi on her debut album and has now returned for this Reproduction and Mix Translation: A Ten Part Measure. This is along the lines of what Laswell did with Bob Marley, Miles Davis and Carlos Santana in the past, which puts Gigi in great company. In actual fact, Illuminated is almost more Laswell than Gigi. Sure, it's Gigi's original music that Laswell manipulates here but it's almost unrecognizable. This in itself is a talent that Laswell has. One track that really takes advantage of this working is "Sew Argen". It has the bassy, almost water drum sound to it with a sunny outlook, which is unusual for Bill's reworkings. His stuff is usually dark and brooding, but on Illuminated Audio he tends to keep the material fairly uplifting. It really works and I'm sure Gigi is proud of this release.

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