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Time & Perspective Quote by Bill Laswell

"Records are just moments of achievement. They're like receipts for work done. Time goes on and people keep playing music"

About this Quote

Records, in Bill Laswell's framing, are less monuments than paperwork: proof you showed up, did the labor, delivered the goods. Calling albums "receipts" is a deliberately unromantic metaphor, and that’s the point. It knocks the halo off the record-object - the collectible, the legacy marker, the thing that gets ranked, reissued, and fetishized - and drags it back to process. The real story isn’t the artifact; it’s the ongoing practice that produced it.

Laswell’s intent reads like a quiet rebuke to a culture that treats documentation as destiny. In music, especially in scenes shaped by improvisation, remix, and collaboration, the finished product can feel like a snapshot taken mid-motion. His line insists that the snapshot is not the life. "Moments of achievement" acknowledges pride without surrendering to it; achievement is real, but it’s temporary, and it’s never the last word.

The subtext is also about power: who benefits when records become the primary unit of value. Labels, platforms, critics, and awards all prefer neat objects they can market and measure. Musicians, meanwhile, live in time - rehearsals, gigs, experiments, failed takes, new lineups. Laswell, whose career stretches across jazz, dub, punk, ambient, and beyond, has always treated music as a continuum of collisions rather than a staircase of definitive statements.

The closing clause - time goes on, people keep playing - lands like a grounding chord. It refuses nostalgia and refuses anxiety about permanence. The work continues; the music doesn’t need permission from history to be alive.

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TopicMusic
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APA Style (7th ed.)
Laswell, Bill. (2026, January 15). Records are just moments of achievement. They're like receipts for work done. Time goes on and people keep playing music. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/records-are-just-moments-of-achievement-theyre-141506/

Chicago Style
Laswell, Bill. "Records are just moments of achievement. They're like receipts for work done. Time goes on and people keep playing music." FixQuotes. January 15, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/records-are-just-moments-of-achievement-theyre-141506/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"Records are just moments of achievement. They're like receipts for work done. Time goes on and people keep playing music." FixQuotes, 15 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/records-are-just-moments-of-achievement-theyre-141506/. Accessed 6 Feb. 2026.

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About the Author

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Bill Laswell (born February 12, 1955) is a Musician from USA.

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