Gigi - Illuminated Audio produced by Bill Laswell first time on Vinyl

Artist: Gigi
Title: Illuminated Audio
Label: Time Capsule
Cat Num: TIME003
Release: 10th May 2019
Genre: Electronic
Style: Dub, Ambient
Format: 180g Heavy double vinyl LP with liner notes
by Tyran Grillo. Limited Japanese Obi for the first
pressing. Original artwork by Russell Mills and
photography by Jean-Baptiste Mondino.
Remastered: Claudio Passavanti at Doctor Mix Studios
Curator and Coordinator: Ken Hidaka
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Born Ejigayehu Shibabaw in 1974, Gigi shunned the traditional gender roles expected for Ethiopian women and embraced the same musical freedom she had strived for in her personal life, incorporating the Ethiopian church, funk, hip-hop, West and South African music into her work. She first settled in Nairobi, then Addis Ababa, where she quickly established herself as one of the city’s leading singers. A move to San Francisco in 1998 led to a long creative partnership with bassist and producer Bill Laswell.
Around the same time, Chris Blackwell had stepped away from Island Records to start the Palm Pictures label. He took an interest in Gigi and, together with Laswell, pulled together an all-star cast of musicians - Herbie Hancock, Pharoah Sanders and Wayne Shorter - for her self-titled US debut album. It won international critical acclaim, not just for its cross-cultural musicianship but for making Gigi a “defining voice for the Ethiopian expatriate community”, as journalist Tyran Grillo praises in his Time Capsule liner notes.
After its success, Blackwell encouraged them to rethink the album and Illuminated Audio was born. “Anyone can make a voice sound worldly”, Grillo remarks, “but rare are those who can make one sound inner-worldly.” Gigi was clear with Laswell to give her vocals a minor role “because it’s already been done.” Instead her Amharic verse is fleeting, exhaling through the textures like ghostly fragments. Yet the album is still titled under her name. Not only was it a fully endorsed project by Gigi, but she would be present throughout its development, giving feedback on half-finished ideas as Laswell played them back in the studio. “It works perfectly”, she reflected after the album’s release.
This new vocabulary takes its lead from a technical approach that Laswell had been perfecting during a furtive creative period that included ambient interpretations of Miles Davis, Bob Marley, and Carlos Santana. Approaching Illuminated Audio in a similar way - by returning to the original multitrack masters - Gigi wasn’t just reworked, but recomposed into an expansive lattice of instruments, submerged in a watery ambience of dub and trance undercurrents.

[@DesertRhythm]

Thanks for doing this!