Nicky Skopelitis – Ekstasis

Masterpiece. To say the album is satisfying would be a huge understatement :)

Have fun.

I'm not sure how to even describe this except basically 'every possible genre of music' deftly woven together into something much greater than the sum of its parts as per typical Laswell autonomous zones. The general tone of the album is uplifting and funky but veers to and fro.
When I say 'every type of music' I really am not exaggerating, everything from middle eastern, dub, orchestral music, ambience, rock, jazz, folk, and more. The only consistent things that really make this into a cohesive album is that somehow it knows enough to circle back around stylistically and not get lost, as well as maintaining a consistent vibe, for lack of a better phrase, across all the tracks.

In my humble opinion, this is as great as Material's "Hallucination Engine", a total work of art and an out-of-time musical masterpiece. Extremely emotional guitar playing by Nicky Skopelitis and excellent degree of collaboration from creme-de-la-creme musicians in probably one of their finest moments. Totally recommended for all levels of dub-funk-world-jazz aficionados!

What a great artist, listening to his music reveals every time fresh levels of introspective beauty , love the Ekstasis album in particular, but all his work is of the highest quality.

This album is really two albums folded into one.

The first is a Bill Laswell job, with Zigaboo Modeliste from the Meters on funky, hide-slapping drums. It is perfectly excellent – Laswell has immaculate, if predictable, timing and Zigaboo can hotstep in his sleep.

The second is more of a Jah Wobble album, with Jaki Liebezeit (from Can) on drums, and amounts to probably the greatest funk album ever produced. The off-kilter whipcrack of Liebezeit's whirling, drilling, razoring drum attack through and across Wobble's monstrous bass patterns is truly possessed, driving various collectives into fainting froths and full-on fist-fucks of overdriven melodic statement, crying at the moon, howling down the mountains, moaning up from the sump of a deep well. Gob-smacking stuff.

The four Laswell/Modeliste tracks are – 1) Tarab / 3) Ghost of a chance / 6) One eye open / 10) Telling time.
The utterly exceptional Wobble/Liebezeit tracks are – 2) Meet your maker / 4) Proud flesh / 5) Sanctuary / 7) Heresy / 8) Jubilee / 9) Witness.

Skopelitis, the mysteriously hermetic and very under-recorded guitarist and writer of these tunes, layers exquisite chords and runs, and occasionally lets rip, with suring taste. The world-music combos that play with him permutate from a roster of Simon Shaheen on levantine weeping violin, Amina Claudine Myers on greasy Hammond organ, Foday Muso Suso on kora, the Moroccan Bachir Attar on flute and demented ghaita, and exemplary percussionists Zakir Hussain, Guilherme Franco, and Aiyb Dieng, No vocals at all.

The album is, I think, the best of the many Laswell/Material productions, being completely focused, all five or six minute tracks, with no merely groovy or dubby workouts, all of it melodically fascinating and funky as all hell. Only one downside – there's never been a vinyl version. If you like driven, possessed world-music funk, this is the dog's dangle-bag, the cat's kit, the dead up out and janglebone again. Spirit medicine of a very high order.