Bill Laswell - Axiom Sound System Musical Freezone (Tabla Beat Science / Material / Praxis) PBS Soundstage Series WTTW Studios, Chicago, IL Air date: Jul 13 2006 April 5th, 2005 PBS / WTTW Chicago http://www.pbs.org/wttw/soundstage/laswell/featured.htm http://www.pbs.org/wttw/soundstage/index.htm Lineup: Bill Laswell - bass Zakir Hussain - tablas Karsh Kale - drums Ustad Sultan Kahn - sarangi, vocals Aiyb Dieng - percussion Abegasu Shiota- keyboards Pharaoh Sanders - sax Foday Musa Suso - kora, vocals Nils Petter Molvaer - trumpet Toshinori Kondo - trumpet Hamid Drake - drums Buckethead - guitar, midi Toshinori Kondo - trumpet Grandmixer DXT - turntable, vocals DJ Disk -turntables Brain - drums Pete Cosey - guitar Bootsy Collins - MC Catfish Collins - Clown Oz Fritz - live sound The Clown is the legendary Catfish Collins, Bootsy's older brother and one of the baddest guitar players ever. For more information, consult "Sex Machine" and "Soul Power" by James Brown, "Flashlight" by Parliament, and anything by Bootsy's Rubber Band. The man deserves his props. I'm 95% sure the dude that raps is Bootsy's son Ouiwey (pronounced Ooowee). no set list found for the begining of the show Buckethead's set list: 1. Big Sur Moon 2. Wires and Clips > guitar solo 3. Nunchucks/Robot Dance 4. The Seven Laws of Woo 5. Meta-Matic 6. Keep That Funk Alive (finale w/ Bootsy Collins and Grandmaster DXT) HINT: Oz Fritz's mixes sound REALLY amazing when listened to with headphones. Grab your headphones and see what I'm talking about Here is an idea of the shows layout/review: It started with a Tabla Beat Science style lineup with Zakir Hussein on tablas and a singer/Indian-Viola player (can't remember his name) with keyboards, Karsh, Laswell, DJ Disk and percusionist (??). Zakir and the singer are magnificent, Laswell makes it groove with his 10,000 watts. This was followed by a Material-style lineup with Pharaoh Sanders on lead and Toshi on trumpet efx + african-banjo leads. This lineup had Aiyb on drums, percussion player, keyboard, Laswell, DJ Disk (+ others). Pharaoh and Toshi have phenomenal interplay. There are extreme close-ups of Pharaoh's white-bearded-face with his eyes rolling-up as he plays, he looks possessed...and probably is. Buckethead solo was next with Big Sur Moon, followed by some nunchuku and breakdacing. Then Laswell, Brain, Toshi, and Disk (Praxis) joined him for Seven Laws of Woo. Following that was Meta-Matica. This was a very powerfull Praxis lineup that ended with Buckethead playing a creepy rhythm note while everyone else solo'd (nice DJ work here). Following that was the finale, featuring Bootsy Collins and old and young rappers dressed as clowns, MC'ing over a full band. Grand-mixer DXT was on stage along with Nils Peter Molvaer, Laswell, DJ Disk, Karsh, Brain got a solo, Buckethead got a solo, etc... (there were a lot of people on stage). This rolled into credits. From The PBS Site: Throughout three decades, Bill Laswell has been a constant innovator, fusing seemingly disparate genres into a whole new sound. Touching upon everything from worldbeat, funk, rock, hip-hop and jazz, there are no limits to his experimental approach. No matter what the project, one thing remains a constant – Laswell’s pretty basslines provide a rhythm to which all sounds connect beautifully. The Grammy winner is one of the most prolific artists in modern music, fronting his own band Material and serving as producer, label owner and performer on other’s albums. He has worked with many respected artists, including Herbie Hancock, Mick Jagger, Peter Gabriel, Yoko Ono and Laurie Anderson. Among his many talents is his ability to bring together well-matched singers and players to create a distinct style that defies easy classification. His Soundstage episode embodies his unique approach, transcending any genre boundaries and delivering an engaging performance. From the World Beat of Tabla Beat Science, to the jazzy flavors of Pharoah Sanders backed by Material, it’s an exciting mix. Other surprises include a rocking Buckethead set that includes a little breakdancing and songs by Praxis. The show culminates with an all-star performance, funked up by Bootsy Collins. ------------------------- This is a DVD 5 version of the HD transport stream uploaded by Herr Loco a few weeks ago. It features proper AV synchronization, 16:9 anamorphic video transfer, and 5.1 discreet audio. As such it is an upgrade to the DVD5 version upped by chumbucket which is 4:3, 2 channel, and has synch problems. The new version is worth grabbing just for the synch fix. But those of you who can make use of the anamorphic picture and 5.1 sound will enjoy it even further. Check out the crazy surround panning on Hussein's tabla solo and Buckethead's opening guitar riffs! Not exactly “natural,” but certainly fun. This has been a lengthy and difficult process. Let me tell you all about it. The first issue that had to be dealt with was the synchronization. There were concerns over the first DVD5 version uploaded by chumbucket and people have been asking for a fix for a long time now. I downloaded the chumbucket version to see for myself and the synchronization is definitely off. However, when I grabbed Herr Loco’s HD file I discovered that exactly the same problem exists there as well. According to comments Herr Loco made on his torrent, the file plays back in synch on his system but might be out of synch when played back on systems with lesser processing power. I’m running a Pentium IV with a 3.2 GHZ processor and 512 mb of ram. That’s not bad. I don’t have an HD video card, so perhaps this is part of my problem. But when I loaded the file into VideoRedo and offset the synch by 150 milliseconds it played fine the whole way through. I wasn’t experiencing any stuttered playback or other signs of a struggling processor, despite the fact that I was still playing the original HD file. Additionally, when I later converted the original file to standard definition DVD and played it on my standalone player, the synch problems remained. So there was more going on here than just playback issues on my PC. And because the synch problems on Herr Loco’s HD version are pretty much identical to the synch problems on chumbucket’s capture, I suspect they are inherent to the source material. But my purpose wasn’t to question other people’s experience but rather to produce a properly synchronized DVD5 version of this show. So whatever the source of the problem, it needed to be fixed. The aforementioned VideoRedo program provided this fix: it supports HD transport stream files and has a function for offsetting the AV synch by quite a wide margin, after which it reconstructs a new HD transport stream frame by frame with the new synch in place. As far as I know this process is lossless, and it keeps the original 5.1 audio mix in tact. After agonizing for several days over the level of offset required (staring intently at the close-ups of Karsh Kale, Hamid Drake, and Brain throughout the program) I decided that moving the sound ahead by 150 milliseconds pretty much did the trick. Unfortunately, I discovered that when I then passed it through HDTV2DVD to convert it to an SD Mpeg-2 file suitable for DVD, new synch problems emerged. I had read about this problem with HDTV2DVD and have now experienced it for myself. So after some trial and error I went back and re-adjusted the synch in VideoRedo to 200 milliseconds in order to compensate for the additional offset created by HDTV2DVD. If not perfect it is now pretty darn tight. Hopefully you’ll all agree. I can’t get it any closer than this. Why didn’t I scrap HDTV2DVD and find a conversion program that didn’t introduce further synch problems? Read on. The question was how best to make the conversion from the HD file to an SD file compliant with the DVD specs. HD transport stream files are not supported by many of the leading video editing programs. And even when they are, more often than not the recoding process demands that the audio be mixed down to two channels. I really wanted to keep the original 5.1 mix in tact, and could only find a couple of programs that would allow this. The leading contenders were HDTV2DVD and Womble. The video encoding on both leaves something to be desired, so I then turned to my trusty Mac to see what Compressor would do. It did a better job on a short extract, but the render times are astronomical. It would have taken over a full week to render the entire 55 minute file, and the gains in video quality were not equal to the commitment that would take. So, back to my two PC options. Womble, even on its high quality setting with a very long render time, didn’t do as nice a job on the picture as HDTV2DVD. Plus, it seems that HDTV2DVD does not re-encode the audio when making the conversion. I don’t know this for sure, but that’s what the program tells you as the conversion process is taking place. Once I figured out how to adjust for the additional synch problems it seemed like the best option. So I went with that to create an MPEG-2 program stream file containing the original anamorphic aspect ratio and 5.1 sound mix. Finally came the DVD authoring process. HDTV2DVD has a function where it will recode the HD transport stream directly to burn-ready VTS and VOB files, but that leaves you with no menu or chapter stops. I thought it would be a shame to go to all this trouble and not at least have the option to skip from one song to the next. HDTV2DVD is part of a larger program called SVCD2DVD which DOES support menu creation but, strangely, does NOT allow chapter stops. Other handy programs like NeroVision Express do not allow anything more than 2 channels on the soundtrack, so it was back to Womble. I wasn’t happy with the way that Womble handled the original HD conversion, but with a standard definition mpeg-2 file it wouldn’t have to apply any further compression to get it DVD compliant, so I figured it was a safe bet for the authoring process. It has very convenient functions for chapter and menu creation and I am happy with the result. Unfortunately this means that both the audio and video have been re-encoded as a function of the authoring process. Purists will suggest that this extra step was unnecessary and that the straight no-frills HDTV2DVD version would have been better. If there is real interest in this then I can upload that version as well. But I think most will appreciate the extra work. I’ve created chapter stops at appropriate points both during applause breaks and within longer continuous sets. For example, if you want to jump directly to Hussein’s tabla solo in the opening set, that is now possible. The menus are organized according to the three different sets performed in the program, each having their own page with the corresponding chapter links along with appropriate wallpaper imagery and background sound. And in the end there is almost no depreciation in the quality of either image or sound as a result of the additional encoding. I am really picky about bad compression, and when I compare the pre-Womble version to the post-Womble version I honestly don’t hear or see much difference. Womble seems to do a good job when you feed it material that requires no further compression. Having said that, it is important to keep in mind that the original HD file has sound compressed at 384 kps. This is a decent rate, and I imagine it is what was sent out on the original broadcast. But it is far from lossless. So there are definite artifacts on the soundtrack common with mpeg audio compression. But in this particular case there is no way around this, and when comparing the sound between the finished DVD5 version and the original HD file the difference is negligible. Enjoy! *** Lineage: ATSC transport stream files (broken by the seeder into 1 gig segments and joined by me using the join.bat tool) > VideoRedo v2.2.1.445 (synch fix to the original TS file) > HDTV2DVD v0.4 (conversion from HD TS to SD MPEG) > Womble Mpeg Video Wizard (DVD authoring) Encoder Settings: Original HD Transport Stream file: Video: Mpeg-2 16x9/1920x1080i/60Hz : 17.59 Mbps(avg 17.55) Audio: AC-3 - 3/2 Channels (L, C, R, SL, SR) + LFE, 48.0 kHz, 384 kbps. (You’ll find the complete info file from the original HD upload within the torrent folder) HDTV2DVD: Audio – lossless pass through Video – 16:9/720x480 progressive @ 7.8 Mbps Womble: Audio - 6 channel AC-3 @ 446 kps Video - 16x9/720x480 progressive @ 7.8 Mbps Burn Tested. **********************************************************************