Bill Laswell's been-there-done-that CV stretches from the mainstream (Mick Jagger and Sting) to the outer reaches (William Burroughs, Peter Brötzmann, John Zorn). His music has been influenced by everything from dub and funk and avant-metal, as well as electric Miles. Yet this, his first ever solo bass album, ends up as broad-minded roots music: a WOMAD world in which the American Midwest rubs up against Mali and Morocco. Opener ‘Against The Upper House’ has Jaco's harmonics, as well as his slide and glide: Laswell plays fretless for the duration of the record. Yet his instrument is a fretless acoustic – something called a Warwick ‘Alien’ – and that, combined with the understated blend of international and US folk music, calls to mind not finger-popping fusion but Charlie Haden and Pat Metheny's 1997 collaboration, Beyond The Missouri Sky. Gently unfolding over e-bow and slide drones, this is the quietly confident sound of a man with nothing left to prove.