Dalai Lama / Toshinori Kondo / Bill Laswell Life Space Death CD

Life Space Death is an exciting set of music and wisdom from Bill Laswell, Toshinori Kondo and His Holiness, the Dalai Lama. Laswell and Kondo provide the music. The Dalai Lama provides the wisdom through spoken word messages. The messages are about peace, love, serenity, compassion, kindness, acceptance, and any number of hopeful and desirable traits. Laswell and Kondo provide a gentle background with processed sounds and gentle atmospheres. Smooth rhythms accompany the Dalai Lama's words. The instrumental passages are deep and hopeful space music. The spoken messages are printed on the inlay card. This is an essential learning and meditation CD. ~ Jim Brenholts

This collaboration between trumpeter Toshinori Kondo and bassist/producer Bill Laswell is an interesting fusion of the spiritual and the musical that ends up being more interesting musically than spiritually. The first three of its four long and untitled tracks consist of rich ambient atmospheres created by Laswell and Kondo, into which are woven recorded excerpts of speeches by the Dalai Lama on the subjects of life, space, and death. The "Life" and "Death" tracks both feature Laswell's typically melodic and funky basslines bumping along under Kondo's sometimes-heavily treated trumpet lines; the "Space" track is arrhythmic but no less lovely. The problem with these three tracks is not the music, but the spoken-word content, which tends toward inarguable banalities like "Time is always moving" and "As human beings, this planet is our only home." Surely the recorded archives of the Dalai Lama could have yielded more enlightening tidbits than these. The album's final and longest track consists of 14 minutes of instrumental ambience so gauzily insubstantial as to be almost inaudible. Not bad stuff, but hardly essential. ~ Rick Anderson

Producer/bassist Bill Laswell and trumpeter/electronic manipulator Toshinori Kondo continue their fertile, creative collaboration as they join forces with guitarist Eraldo Bernocchi and His Holiness The Dalai Lama on vocals. Here on "L.S.D.," the Dalai L

Full performer name: Bill Laswell/Dalai Lama/Toshinori Kondo.

Personnel: Dalai Lama (vocals); Eraldo Bernocchi (guitar); Toshinori Kondo (trumpet); Bill Laswell (bass).

Personnel: Toshinori Kondo (trumpet, electronics); Bill Laswell (guitar, keyboards); Eraldo Bernocchi (guitar, electronics).NAPRA Review (09-10/01, p.79) - "...This unique effort endeavours to reach millions with a constructive message promoting 'peace, love, compassion, and harmony...'"