Jon Hassell -- Classic Or Dud?

what does everyone think of "fascinoma" where hassell goes to lengths to record himself and the bad without treatments? even has a version of nature boy.

some people love the techno/pop fusion experiments of City and Dressing for Pleasure, they're not bad commercial music, but the drum machine & techno sounds bind them to the time, unlike the earlier records.

great discography at the website - http://www.jonhassell.abelgratis.co.uk/HTML/discs1.html

(I(I(I(I think I've said all of this before.)before.)before.)before.)

if you're talking about City and Dressing for Pleasure, I'm with you. the drum machines dominate. there are some fantastic percussionists on his other records though, have you heard Flash of the Spirit? 10 piece percussion ensemble from Burkina Faso...

No, seriously -- I've always wondered if the more "traditional" rhythm beds and generally obtuse textures of Possible Musics saved it from MLITBOG's fate.

Milton, I always liked Power Spot -- more driving rhythms and all. What's your beef?

Rockist has a point about the occasional stiff rhythm on some of these records, but this music is primarily about impossible texture & references to things that almost don't exist, so I don't mind.

Huh — I consider myself fairly sensitive to those, but never noticed on Power Spot.

this music is primarily about impossible texture & references to things that almost don't exist

Exactly — it's as if no one told them exotica was devoid of substance.

he did the music for the practice

I listened to Power Spot again last night, the last two tracks are fantastic... it's not the DX7 sounds, there's just some looped sequences that wear me down a little on some tracks. But the album ends brilliantly, those last two pieces...

It occurs to me that it isn't Voiceprint I didn't care for but rather Dressing For Pleasure — I did notice, however, that one track on the latter sampled the section of Miles Davis' "Sivad" (the part that showed up on Get Up With It as "Honky Tonk"). It hit me that maybe he was drawing the comparison a little too obviously with that...

's a Simon Reynolds article about multi-culture v. mono-culture and the types of fusion that Hassell, Eno and Byrne were/are undertaking. Fourth World, ahoy!

City is transitional, first time he introduces outright drum machine sounds to reference uhm 'the City' but at least the rest of the sounds are still abstract, and it's got some good playing... still...

(He has studied Indian classical music though hasn't he?)

I'm thinking about the way he will frequently finish a line he's playing, with a strong sort of feeling of closure, and then there's often (usually?) some sort of echo effect. You get that sort of sound a lot in Arabic singing, or especially Qur'anic recitation, without effects, just as a result of acoustics.

you kidder.

Maybe I've had too many whiskey sours this evening, but that's how it sounds to me at this moment.

DJ never back announced the piece, either, I didn't find it again for another year...

BTW, milton, I think you were talking about "Wing Melodies" which has sequences and triggers both -- and digibells to boot. But I like it.

Sometimes the first one, Vernal Equinox is my very favorite, it's so minimal; no harmonizer on the trumpet yet, just occasional subtle Buchla. the concept is already there, intensely technological yet primal music.

I like Earthquake Island though some don't, it's very much in the tradition of other 70's jazz fusion records. The harmonizer shows up for the first time. Great band; Rockist, I fully recommend this record if your complaint of the other records involve stiff rhythms. Liner notes: 'Including Nana (Vasconcelos)' Imaginative Percussion'.

Eno set him off on a path towards fragmented, studio-only creations. The three EG records are progressively less about live performance, by Aka-Darbari-Java, apart from one other drummer who was probably sent home after one or two sessions, it's all Hassell & a sampler. I've got it on now, an incredible record, sound of the mirror.

My problem with Power Spot is that it tries to reintroduce live performances, but the sequencers are still leading, and win out, till the very end... Flash of the Spirit is my other favorite because you can tell they started by recording the live band, and the treatments came later...

I want to speak in parentheses...

it sounds like a modern update of The Surgeon of the Nightsky Restores Dead Things By the Power of Sound (which did the same thing to live versions of things from the 1980-1983 fourth world trilogy).

No, no, I just saw it announced, without any details.

great site. no sound samples though.

Whaaa??!?

ok I bought Maarifa Street last night -- it's great. Fuzzy, liquid, and weird again. All the sharp techno edges and slickness of City & Dressing For Pleasure have been dropped, everything's muted and gauzy and mysterious again, although the tracks are still a lot more straightforward than the original trilogy; the rhythmic backing is less alienating & weird, in support for the lead trumpet, but it fits, it works

co-produced by Peter Freeman, who also played bass & laptop in the original concerts. the rhythms are slow & dubby, especially the bass lines; One track samples a dub filtersweep hit from Pole's CD1 for the downbeat (it's such a generic 'dub' sound that I wouldn't have noticed if not for the liner notes).

the album packaging is incredible, a huge sprawling tree filled with dozens of people. when you look very closely, it dawns on you that it's a sprawling multi-racial orgy. it's by Mati Klarwein, same guy who did Earthquake Island & Bitches Brew.

fits the music perfectly, this is an unusually erotically charged album even for Hassell, feels almost awkward listening to this by myself. it's all about the trumpet playing here, and no one sounds like Hassell, I love this record...

I have it -- I just don't think I ever noticed that. That's a fantastic description of the record, btw.

I'd forgotten Richard Horowitz was on Surgeon... have you heard Horowitz & Sussan Deihim's Azax Attra : Desert Equations? that is one classic record, definitely related to the fourth world series...

just found this interview online:

RH: I met Paul thanks to Brion Gysin...  I had been working on my music in between Paris and Morocco since 1969 when I received my first infusion of magnetic ecstatic blood thunder and I knew I was on to something...

http://www.richardhorowitz.com/press2.shtml

wow, she sings on Eros as well, RS, let me know if you want to trade (all these things are way out of print)

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00009LI7U/qid%3D1116131185/sr%3D11-1/ref%3Dsr%5F11%5F1/103-2848508-8628646

I don't like that tree painting on the package. If it's meant to be celebratory of life energy and sexuality and so forth, for me it just comes across as grotesque (and something about the stylized figures turns me off too). A piece of the 60s better left in that era.

after the first two weeks with Maarifa I just went back through the catalog and listened to the first five albums like crazy... I hear rumors that Dream Theory is getting reissued. hope so.

weird that Eno, Budd and Hassell all have new albums out within months of each other. Budd & Guthrie's Mysterious Skin is particularly good.

the new one

total winning streak, same mood as 'Maarifa Street' but even fuzzier & spaced out. and live percussion this time, not hearing loops, it's all gauze

he also put up a linked autobiography on his website which is very readable. strewn with polaroids of his muses.

That sounds promising. I've been appreciating Fascinoma a little more, recently.

So, so glad I got to see him play live.

i went down to see him in london a couple of years ago and was super disappointed. he was on fine form but the other two guys he was playing with were lameorama.

i couldn't get out quickly enough and as the lights came up i made a swift exit and stood on someone's toe. i turned round to apologise and it was brian eno. oops!

And that's why you should never go see Jon Hassel in London, you might step on Brian Eno's toes.

(Twenty-five years or so of listening to his music and I still have not learned how to spell his last name.)

living with it this week, new album is a lot more traditional & upfront. a lot more recognizable. less mysterious but that doesn't stop it from being beautiful. whereas late 70's / early 80's Hassell is too exotic and mutant to recognize as anything, you just fall into them with no compass, but this telegraphs itself a bit more directly.

I need to hear Fascinoma, that was clearly a reset for him. there's a track on here that quotes Ellington's 'Caravan', a quote that familiar should be too bald to work but here it doesn't sound like a reference, it just sounds perfect

You've never heard Fascinoma at all, or just not lately? I guess you know he coves "Caravan" on Fascinoma (one of my favorite tracks on that album). My favorite part of that album is probably still Jacky Terrasson 's piano playing, but I've come back to appreciating Hassell's playing on it more.

(I don't mean to act so shocked that you might not have heard Fascinoma, but you seem to have heard everything lse b him.)

(Can't see the end of the line when I type, incidentally. I think that makes me nervous and I start making misakes.)

(Exactly.)

It's the only one I haven't heard. When it came out, after City & Dressing For Pleasure I just wasn't as excited about a new Hassell record. Definitely going to pick it up next time I see it.

the latest one is a pretty incredible how-much-can-we-strip-away experiment - kind of like a d'n'b record without any rhythm track at some points. 2nd song is like watching blood coagulate. really something else.

this prompted me to give last night... another listen. still fantastic. and the dnb w/o any rhythm track is pretty much spot-on for the more dubby, less fusiony material. but sloooooowed down.

love this album.

the new one is indeed sick

you know which one's good? Sulla Strada, music for a 1982 Italian dance production. I got it when it finally came out in 98, but it felt peripheral at the time, a lot of the fragments are simple looped textures & resampled tracks from Fourth World Vol. 1 & 2, but coming back to it this month, that is precisely why it is so great. a lot more overt in its use of directly appropriative sampling (both of ethno-folk music & self-remixing) than on any other record of his, except Aka Darbari Java (which is the one of his I've been playing most this year)

The Washington Post's pop music critic Chris Richards put this in as his tenth fave cd of the year---he described it this way : With his 15th studio album, the esteemed jazz trumpeter evaporated Miles Davis’ cosmic slop into a resplendent sonic mist.

I'm talking about the 2009 one “Last Night the Moon Came Dropping Its Clothes in the Street”

Actually I think he's just playing with the same sonic mist as In A Silent Way, but that's one of my favourite kinds of weather so I love it.

I like the new one. It is very distilled.

In the context of this intrepidly experimental environment, Hassell would come to a concept that would affect everything to come. "So I started making little things with tapes and collages," Hassell describes. "I remember one of the first things I ever did was to take a big thick chord sung by the Hi-Lo's, and kind of slice up that chord—we're talking splicing tape here—and making a cubist mash-up of the chord. Call it early sampling, when you're basically just recording a piece of something and with tape manipulation you're playing around [with it].

"So I go off to Europe, where I studied with Stockhausen for a couple of years," Hassell continues. "My wife was a pianist and she falls into that scene of playing Stockhausen at recitals and things like that. In the meantime, someone brings over The Beatles and says, 'Hey, listen to this, this is cool.' One of the scores I did was to take a Schoenberg piece and chop it up and have these little electronic devices—basically mixes that had a little keyboard on it so that the players were playing this sample of altered strings as softly as they could (you couldn't hear them on stage without amplification), so every time somebody plays the keyboard or hits one of the little nodes on the keyboard, then suddenly what they were playing would come to the fore.

"Lamonte Young and I did a performance in Rome and I heard [Indian vocal master Pandit] Pran Nath warming up. He was also doing a concert in the series there. I was warming up, I was playing these patterns; I had been sort of experimenting with a wah-wah pedal and all that, à la Miles from that period [early '70s]. And I was playing these patterns and Pran Nath heard me warming up; and so I heard him and he heard me and he took these patterns and started spinning them off. And I thought, 'Wow! That's cool.' So then I started studying. Raga was just raga to me. It was music from another place and I had no idea of how it was formed and shaped and what the ethos of it was. So then I started studying. I started studying with the trumpet, first singing and then trying to apply it to trumpet. Basically I had to pull away and kind of unlearn everything and start from there."

best career overview interview / article on Hassell I've ever read! his 60's background before getting to new york, the stuff on page 3, hadn't read any description of that in any depth at all before

http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=32743&pg=1

"There was a lot of last-minute touching up," Hassell admits. "And then I threw out the North line that we had glommed on all these things. I had had this big idea about having that—I had made these sort of mega-sessions in Pro Tools with like a hundred tracks and the idea was to like make these wild mixes, like montage. It looked like wild mixes in which there would have been even more than one motif drifting between pieces, which is kind of a grand idea. But eventually only a very small part of that actually wound up on the record.

hope he gets to make this kind of record next time. interesting to hear about Eicher's involvement on the new record from the first sessions, it's so odd how he ends up collaboratively moderating the mood on almost everything on ECM. also interesting to read that Power Spot was one of the rare ECM records that the artist finished on his own clock before bringing it to the label

I wanted to like the new one, but I found the bass really really annoying for some reason. It's been too long since I've listened to have much of a sense of why at this point, if I ever did. Basically, his rhythms still sound corny to me lately.

FWIW, I was DJing at a Matmos gig in Cleveland and dropped "Datu Bintung At Jelong" (as you do), and Matmos' MC Schmidt came racing to the decks to declare that Dream Theory In Malaya is his favorite album of all time. This little anecdote represents the zenith of my DJ "career."

Listening to Dream Theory right now. "Datu Bintung At Jelong"'s AMS/Eventide pitch shifter loop is like ambient crack. "Malay" sounds like the percussionist is performing in a lake. Less background than Possible Musics Vol. 1 and more esoteric in places but a great album.

definitely better than most music

Reading an interview in Electronic Musician from a few years ago w him and he starts saying how so many of his compositions come out of other things he's done and then he says "Charm" is based off of the coda to the title track of Earthquake Island. I've had that record sitting in my iTunes library for years and just listened to it for the first time. And you don't have to wait for the coda to hear the string synth playing the part -- it's as plain as day from the opening note.

Fourth World is one of my favorite records ever, something I listen to once a week. I own the entire Hassell catalogue and the only weak ones are Sulla Strada, which is a rehash of earlier stuff and just too harsh to my ears, and Flash of the Spirit. the early ones, Vernal Equinox and Earthquake Island, are superior world-jazz records. I have some of this live Bluescreen stuff and think it's amazing. Dressing for Pleasure is more conventional and very fine. As he went on, he seemed to have referenced Miles Davis' electric stuff more, and while I prefer Miles to Jon Hassell--I prefer Miles' electric music to almost any other music I know--I think Hassell really did the instrumental thing way better than Eno, seems to have more content. Maarifa Street is a very good record from his "later" period and I prefer it to Fascinoma. There's also a cool Sub Rosa thing from '87, Myths 3. La Nouvelle Serenite, that has a great Hassell piece along with stuff by Harold Budd and Gavin Bryars. I find his Ry Cooder/Ronu Majumdar collab Hollow Bamboo to be, well, kinda hollow bamboozle. Dream Theory in Malaya has some nice stuff but some of the repetitions seem annoying to me. In the Eno doc Man Who Fell to Earth, Hassell gives the impression that Eno kinda stole his thunder, and I believe I read something to that effect in this Eno bio I read recently.

anyone heard this: http://www.discogs.com/Punkt-2-Featuring-Sidsel-Endresen-Jon-Hassell-Live-Remixes-Vol-1/release/2088246

not mentioned on hassell's web discography. saw it in the stores, hesitated, still curious

No but just realized Jan Bang is his live samplist -- I have his solo record on Samadhi Sound but haven't heard it yet.

Listening to Possible Musics now -- realize I've always had a bit of a confused relationship with it. For me, the biggest issue I have with it is that it's sequenced a bit funny -- as obviously groundbreaking as it is (and I've seen those quotes too -- when you compare it to his first two albums, I feel like Hassell maybe doesn't give Eno enough credit), "Chemistry" is a bit of a sleeper as an opener. For me, a lot of what it does rhythmically and texturally feels a little more deeply explored up thru Flash of the Spirit.

I made the dreadful music of owning that first David Sylvian record before Possible Musics.

Well, that's only a dreadful mistake of you didn't like it. I love Words w the Shaman. The biggest difference is that it feels distinctly more teleological than most of Hassell's own stuff. Which isn't a bad thing.

It's such a concerted carbon copy of PM that it's tainted PM for me.

Yes and no. I mean, yes, it's got Hassell's trumpet, atmospherics and "ethnic" percussion. But compositionally it feels pretty different.

If it hasn't been clear enough, over the last few weeks, I've been borderline obsessed with his 80s records. Even after listening to Hassell for years and reading dozens of Toop/Reynolds/Wire articles and interviews about his compositional process and the theory behind it, there are so many things about the way these records sound and were recorded that remain somewhat of a mystery to me as a musician.

Some of it is the compositional process itself. For instance, Hassell has said that one method he uses is playing older material and using where that goes as the basis of a new composition. But is it the band playing the song live in the studio? Or is it Hassell sampling the original track? Or both? As noted above, while the riff in "Charm" is lifted from the title track of Earthquake Island, it's not clear whether it's a sample (triggered by an AMS delay or whatever) or just Hassell playing a chord progression from his previous record.

But it's also the sounds themselves -- and this is where I think Eno and Lanois come in. Hassell's trumpet is obviously a huge part of it -- with the harmonizer and the way he plays the instrument. But many of the "treatments" are far more subtle, yet add a new dimension to the overall sound. I've heard Possible Musics literally hundreds of times but just recently noticed that a lot of the percussion parts are pitch-shifted to give the drums a bigger, more open, hollow and watery character. In other instances, sounds are processed to the point that they become virtually unrecognizable. According the credits, both Power Spot and The Surgeon of the Nightsky... have Michael Brook playing guitar on them -- but I don't much in the way of guitar, if any. And still other times, parts are processed to sound like completely different or "impossible" instruments -- made possible by the studio.

It makes me think that while there have always been comparisons drawn between Hassell's work and Miles Davis' in the 70s, one that seems particularly appropriate is their use of technology -- specifically, the way they used technology to mutate and blend the sound of the ensemble. And where in Miles' band, the technology of choice was wah-wah pedals (even Mtume used one on his percussion), for Hassell/Eno/Lanois it's running everything through Eventide pitch shifters and early samplers.

I know Eno avoids gear fetish discussions like the plague and understand why -- but I'd be fascinated to read a more in depth piece about the approach he took with these records.

And I still feel that way.

anyone heard this: http://www.discogs.com/Punkt-2-Featuring-Sidsel-Endresen-Jon-Hassell-Live-Remixes-Vol-1/release/2088246

not mentioned on hassell's web discography. saw it in the stores, hesitated, still curious

http://open.spotify.com/album/5Kl0psNsQSWT5d62whDRUN

I got this on cd a while ago. (Probably wouldn't have if it'd been on Spotify.) It's good though. About what you'd expect, but good.

Hello.

DISC ONE - CITY: WORKS OF FICTION

Original Fictions

1. Voiceprint (Blind From The Facts)
2. Pagan
3. Mombasa
4. Tikal
5. In The City Of Red Dust
6. Rain
7. Ba-Ya D
8. Warriors
9. Out Of Adedara


DISC TWO - THE LIVING CITY

Live at Wintergarden 17 September 1989

1. Ituri
2. Alchemistry
3. Adedara Rising
4. Mashujaa
5. Paradise Now
6. Nightsky


DISC THREE - PSYCHOGEOGRAPHY

Zones Of Feeling

1. Aerial View
2. Neon Night (Rain)
3. Red Rose Empire [Bass Clef Remix]
4. Streetfaxx
5. City Spot
6. Brigantes [808 State Remix]
7. Cityism Superdub
8. Elsewhere Is A Negative Mirror [Some Truths Remix]
9. Harambe
10. Ba-Ya Dub [No UFOs Remix]
11. Freeway
12. Cuba Libre
13. Metal Fatigue [patten Remix]
14. Midnight
15. Waterfront District
16. Favela
17. Emerald City
18. Cloud-Shaped Time

Due for release in June.

Oh nice, love that record!

The live material sounds interesting.

The new cover looks great but is a real departure from the original and this, the cover to the last reissue

http://img1.bdbphotos.com/images/orig/r/z/rzg66k703xm0zr6x.jpg?djet1p5k

well dang hotlink police

RFI: can anyone suggest other recent musics with the feel of Maarifa Street and Last Night The Moon Came Dropping Its Clothes In The Street. Slow, dubby, semi-improvisatory, with heavy bass and textural electronics and organics wafting about? Most times I venture into this vicinity the result misses the mark, erring towards ambiance or freneticism.

not too recent anymore, but one of the better hassellish artists: http://www.discogs.com/Paul-Sch%C3%BCtze-Apart/release/175542

recently got Hassell's Fascinoma, which I always put off because I wasn't sure if I was interesting in hearing his 'standards' record, or hearing his horn without technology or effects. I was so wrong, this is one of his weirdest records. City is by far my least favorite Hassell album but the 2nd disc looks like it could be all right

was drawn to Michel Fahres' 'The Tubes' because of Hassell's playing on the 30 min title track but the whole album is good: http://coldbluemusic.com/pages/CB0024.html

Miguel Frasconi posted this to Soundcloud streaming-only the other day, live versions circa Possible Musics --

https://soundcloud.com/frasconimusic/sets/jon-hassell-group-1982
Live performance by the Jon Hassell Performance Group, Avignon, France, June 1982. John Hassell: trumpet; Michael Brook: processing, kalimba; J. A. Dino Dean: log drum, percussion; Miguel Frasconi: udu, glass, keyboard

Harmonizer (Greg Davis and Toby Aronson) had an EP in 2011 that traversed some of Hassell's fourth world terrains:

http://www.softwarelabel.net/shop/harmonizer-world-complete/

I'll second the Paul Schutze suggestion and recommend his "New Maps Of Hell" album. Also "Bloody Thief" by Shinjuku Thief on the same label - http://www.discogs.com/Shinjuku-Thief-Bloody-Tourist/release/124161

Extreme put out a lot of Fourth World type stuff but as mentioned, it's not recent.

Rapoon sometimes remind me of Hassell but they have a fairly daunting discography.

In related news, All Saints have a Hassell remix EP coming out (featuring Patten, Mordant Music and others). I haven't had time to listen to it yet and confess to being a bit wary. Will report back

wow that harmonizer ep is shameless, pretty brave fun Greg

http://jadeane.com/blog/wed-04232014-0805

i was correct to be wary.

I'll second the Paul Schutze suggestion and recommend his "New Maps Of Hell" album.

An absolute favorite of mine, still.

My review of the City reissue:

http://www.wonderingsound.com/review/jon-hassell-city-works-fiction/

new 3 CD City reissue is pretty great. second live disc ebbs and flows along, but the third disc is definitely not the potpourri mess I was expecting -- it's a full 80 minutes but it's been structured beautifully as an album, even the four remixes fit in well.

even the original album sounds better to me this time around; I got this when it came out, and simply couldn't get over hearing the same late 80's drum machine sounds I was hearing everywhere else show up on a Jon Hassell record, but I'm a little less hung up on that decades later and I'm mostly just listening to how structured and tight his playing is, peaking on something

this comes after a few months of addictively listening through Fascinoma, which somehow has become one of my favorite records of his

one of the songs on the 3rd City disc is from a late 90's promo Hassell remix city called Vertical Collection - has anyone heard it / have it? - http://www.discogs.com/Jon-Hassell-The-Vertical-Collection-sketches/release/1796065

& it's not online yet but I'll just put this here for now

http://www.kcrw.com/music/shows/morning-becomes-eclectic/jon-hassell-2014-07-16

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKNmQaoza5E

http://www.spin.com/articles/jon-hassell-goes-below-the-belt-challenges-phillip-glass-to-dance-off/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8jnSHZTzs0

i had slept on "vernal equinox" initially cuz i thought the thing i liked abt jh were the weird electronic textures, but man this is magical

ahhh that's the same gig on the reissue right?

http://www.johncoulthart.com/feuilleton/2014/06/28/power-spot-by-michael-scroggins/

http://continuo-docs.tumblr.com/post/90825135135/jon-hassel-power-spot-1986-michael-scroggins

daniel lopatin seems to have based a large bit of his aesthetic on that video

Jammin' some Earthquake Island for the first time this morning. Going down pretty smooth. Yeah.

such a great and bizarre fusion record. JH hates it apparently!

Must be the rubberband bass; seems pretty exclusive to this album in his discography.

[Future Miles Davis bassist and A Tribe Called Quest collaborator] Ron Carter

True on both accounts.

no doubt but considering he's essentially the platonic ideal of a jazz bassist it was peculiar

lol Spin ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

thats about it. good interview though- Hassel's a lot more, erm, earthy than my conception of hismusic would have led me to believe

Here's an audio interview from this past year : http://www.residentadvisor.net/podcast-episode.aspx?exchange=270

so classic

Possible that I like Aka/Darbari/Java: Magic Realism the best. It's like he sat in Lanois' Hamilton studio with the goal of making imaginary pygmy music out of a trumpet, a sampler, a harmonizer, and a cardboard box.

i've said it before -- i want to live in the imaginary world that music comes from

I am really slow on the uptake, never realized it was his incredible muted horns on those David Sylvian albums. Just picked up "Possible Musics" and have flipped for it. What should I sample next?

The ECM discs (Power Spot from '86 and Last Night the Moon Came Dropping its Clothes in the Street from '09) are probably going to be the easiest to track down and both are damn good records.

Shame his back catalogue is so fragmented as far as availability. Some of it is on the good ol' Spotify, I guess.

Which reminds me, I need to fill the holes in my own collection.

"Alchemistry," from the City live set, is a pretty neat little reworking of "Chemistry" from Possible Musics.

& it's not online yet but I'll just put this here for now

http://www.kcrw.com/music/shows/morning-becomes-eclectic/jon-hassell-2014-07-16🔗

this was a very good recommendation upthread:

There's also a cool Sub Rosa thing from '87, Myths 3. La Nouvelle Serenite, that has a great Hassell piece along with stuff by Harold Budd and Gavin Bryars.

http://alycesantoro.com/jon%20hassell%20-%20map2/jon_hassell1.jpg

http://alycesantoro.com/MAP2.html

linked from this, also good

http://www.alycesantoro.com/politics_of_sound_art.html

Hassell's new Ndeya imprint seems to be up and running, with digital reissues of Vernal Equinox, Earthquake Island, Sulla Strada and Maarifa Street. These have also turned up on streaming services at last. (What with ECM, YMO and now early Hassell up on Spotify/Apple Music, it's been a good few weeks for stuff I like being put out there.)
https://boomkat.com/labels/ndeya

I think Ndeya is being run as an imprint of Warp, rather like All Saints is these days? I've heard a lot of talk that there's a new album in the offing too, and I hope he cracks on with this rather than his very dubious sounding book.

Also, I hope this leads to a vinyl reissue of Vernal Equinox - that record is a bit pricey for my liking these days.

New album coming out 8th June on his new Warp imprint Ndeya:
https://jonhassell.bandcamp.com/album/listening-to-pictures-pentimento-volume-one

The preview track, Dreaming, is the one he played on the Gilles Peterson Words & Music podcast a couple of years back (in a slightly restructured form). It's, er, very dreamy. Looking forward to this.

"The release of this new album also sees the launch of Jon’s own label, Ndeya (pronounced “in-day-ya”), which will be a home for new work as well as well as selected archival releases, including re-presses of classic sides and some astonishing unreleased music."

Thanks, this sounds really promising. It's also kind of awesome to see a musician launching a new label and releasing new music in his 82nd year.

streaming: https://www.thewire.co.uk/audio/tracks/preview-jon-hassell-s-new-album

Very excited for this new one.

Between this and the new record from Steve Tibbetts, it's a great year for aging guys who make totally unique and wonderfully soothing music.

New Tibbetts is magnificent, easily one of my favorite albums of the year, and maybe his best!

oh shit!!!

Listening now. Three songs in, this is fantastic. Like the Jon Hassell album for Kompakt you never knew you needed. Incredible to me how he keeps his (very distinctive, very recognizable) sound so fresh. Sounds very much like Jon Hassell, but somehow sounds very "now," too.

End of "Picnic" sounds Necks-y. I love the Fender Rhodes! (assuming that is what it is)

Like the Jon Hassell album for Kompakt you never knew you needed.

fuckin

this train can’t take me home soon enough

haha <3 u Brad

this record is wonderful

Fuuuuuuuk

A cynic might say this is just a Hassell record crossed with '94 Diskont', but against that proposition I would proffer that this is also a Hassell record crossed with '94 Diskont'.

Heh, sold.

lol tim otm

This is an amazing record. Maarifa Street and Last Night... (both of which are great) suggested he was moving gracefully towards a kind of dubby ambient jazz - but this is something else, wilder and far less smooth. Seriously heavy low end on it too.

pvmic but i think this is my album of the year (it's been an extremely rich year)

mine too honestly, haven't been blown away by anything new this instantly in a bit

(although this is my first hassell; what are the recommended starting points?)

imo you can go backwards but i loooove last night basically as much as the new one

i think most would recommend either of the fourth world records though

Fourth World, Vol. 1: Possible Musics (with Brian Eno), Power Spot and Last Night the Moon Came Dropping Its Clothes in the Street are all classic in my book.

I've actually never heard Dream Theory in Malaya. Time to remedy that.

I think Hassell's discography is so consistently brilliant and unique, pretty much any way is a good direction. Some of the availability of his catalogue is a bit spotty, unfortunately. But, it's all worthwhile. Maybe the only thing that isn't as immediately akin to the rest of his stuff is Bluescreen; but that's pretty good.

I haven't heard the new one yet, so I can't really comment on how it stands in regards to the rest of his work.

Iiiii neeeeed tooooo heeeaaaarrrr thiiiiiiiiiiisssssss

Aka/Darbari/Java is my favorite solo rec of his fwiw

spare, evocative, kinda mesmerizing

I've actually never heard Dream Theory in Malaya. Time to remedy that.

― pomenitul, Friday, June 8, 2018 11:09 AM (twenty-two minutes ago)

I really like that one. Weird follow-up to the original Fourth World album, but a very good record all the same.

Aka/Darbari/Java is probably my favourite as well.
and this new one is incredible. maybe the best thing i listened this year.

thanks y'all :+)

Today is its release date so it's on Spotify now. Presumably the other streaming svcs as well.

Ha, pfork says 7.3.

I think Hassell's discography is so consistently brilliant and unique, pretty much any way is a good direction. Some of the availability of his catalogue is a bit spotty, unfortunately. But, it's all worthwhile.

― (V) (°,,,,°) (V) (Austin), Friday, June 8, 2018 2:15 PM (three hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I have everything he's ever released and I agree with this statement. Even City, which I didn't connect with at the time, sounds brilliant and ahead of its time to me now

I think I took City: Works of Fiction for granted because it was the first album of his I got and it was hilariously easy to acquire (especially in comparison to the lengths I had to go to get some of his other records). The three disc reissue from a few years back was a great way to get to reintroduce myself to it.

I think I need to revisit the Bluescreen album. I remember it being the other one of his, besides City, that was most common in used bins. I bought it the first time, when I was just kind of exploring new things in college and it was played maybe twice. I either traded it or gave it away, don't remember. But then I reacquired it about a decade ago, right around the time Last Night the Moon Came Dropping Its Clothes in the Street came out and the majority of his back catalogue was out of print and second hand copies were rising in price. I may have listened to Bluescreen three times since then. So, yeah: it's due for a reassessment, I think.

I've never managed to fall in love with the Bluescreen album but it does contain one of my all time favourite Hassell tracks in "Blue Night (live)" which is literally and metaphorically lumped on the end of the cd. It's totally out of step with the rest of the album and more akin to something from "Power Spot", but is so, so sublime.

I've not listened to the new one enough to really formualte an opinion yet.

i just listened to "Listening To Pictures" again and oddly, I'd swear the track "Ndeya" samples the track "Blue Night (live)" mentioned above.

so happy I am home and listening to this new one, sounds great so far

Also, if you guys don't know it, this one is terrific:

https://www.discogs.com/Jon-Hassell-Fascinoma/master/527072

oh my god "Picnic" - I can see where y'all are getting the Oval vibes from

Dream Theory in Malaya is good (especially the last 3 tracks), but the relentless fluttering of "Chor Moire" and unsettling squelchy loop on "Datu Bintung at Jelong" both make me feel like I'm about to have a panic attack.

Didn't expect *this* Jon Hassell at all. A lovely surprise.

The end of Picnic sounds like Zawinul! Marvellous.

Dream Theory in Malaya is good (especially the last 3 tracks), but the relentless fluttering of "Chor Moire" and unsettling squelchy loop on "Datu Bintung at Jelong" both make me feel like I'm about to have a panic attack.

― Hideous Lump, Saturday, June 9, 2018 12:38 AM (eight hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

My wife has the same reaction to this record, and uses the same words ("panic attack") to describe it. She also refers to it "anxiety music" despite liking or at least being indifferent to everything else by Hassell she's heard. The only other thing that inspires such a reaction from her is Wolfgang Voigt (solo, not GAS), whose music she loathes

What do people think of surgeon of the nightsky

I love it

this thing is great! reminds me a bit of the ambient electronic jazz that Justin Walter has been putting out on Kranky

Received mine yesterday. Wonderful and quiet pressing except for an annoying defect at the end of side 1, a very audible ticking / scuff sound. Anyone else experience this?

Got this in the mail today and just finished up my first listen now. Wow, what a wonderful turn in sound from Last Night the Moon Came Dropping its Clothes in the Street. That was essentially beatless, where this new one definitely has a rhythmic base, but not quite as defined as Maarifa Street. First impression is that it strikes a perfect balance between the funky backbeats of Maarifa Street and the impressionistic wash of Last Night the Moon Came Dropping its Clothes in the Street. Fantastic.

I like this but the drum sounds on "Pastorale Vassant" sound distractingly dated where everything else sounds unattached to any time.

They don't bother me, but I see what you mean. They're mixed pretty low though, and used subtly throughout, so it's not like you're listening to "Come To Daddy" or something

It's a mid-90s Wire Magazine wet dream ;-)

I really like it, first four tracks especially so far. Breezes by at <37 minutes.

For those that hoped for more in the *Last Night the Moon Came Dropping Its Clothes* vein, some of that itch may be scratched by Sly & Robbie Meet Nils Petter Molvær feat. Eivind Aarset and Vladislav Delay - *Nordub* (2018).

Caveat, Nordub is really is more of an African Head Charge type album than Fourth World (though I think it would be great at -30% tempo). NP Molvær's past work is closest to a Hassell protege I'm aware of.

This Sly and Robbie is fantastic - thanks for the heads up. Have added to the Sly & Robbie thread.

On my first listen, this is wonderful.
Lovely liner notes from Hassell himself. Good to read this: "Finally, I'm pleased to note that this record also marks a valued moment of reconnection with my longtime friend, Brian Eno."

What is the connection to Eno here?

No actual/musical connection with this particular album. There's some background on the reconnection in this candid interview with Billboard (and a not so subtle diss on David Byrne :)

https://www.billboard.com/articles/news/8463129/jon-hassell-interview

But anyway, my lingering scars of being left off any mention of My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, that was the clearest evidence that the backroom boys – Brian's managers and David's managers of the time – [were like] "Hold on here, that guy could come after you with a big lawsuit." And I was still in the ivory tower frame of mind and didn't have a structure there. If I had been Ry Cooder and had a management structure, that would have been my harpoon to lance this appropriation. So I wrote a 50-page letter a couple years ago when I was way down on my luck, and I made a big reconnection with Brian, and I would say we're brothers now. And that was a rough patch for me. But that's ironed itself out. I've had zero contact with David, but he's not exactly in the same intellectual class with Brian, so that's not surprising.

Yikes

what did he contribute to the record? serious question, I never knew he was involved. I guess I could look up the chapter in Rip It Up but I'm at work.

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bq-HZ5IHnAm/

what did he contribute to the record? serious question, I never knew he was involved. I guess I could look up the chapter in Rip It Up but I'm at work.

jon hassell fucking RULES.

i picked up a nice copy of Power Spot yesterday and it has blown my mind. it's up there with his very best work, if not above it. produced by eno/lanois, recorded in 83 but not really released until 86 (i think)? many of the songs are hypnotic in a way that reminds me of some songs on the francis bebey Psychedelic Sanza 1982-1984 comp.

10 out of 10. five stars. "A Masterpiece", an early Oscar Pick, 6 bags of popcorn, 6 sodas.

I give Jon Has.. Jona Hassle.. Jon Has Well's 'Power Spot' five bags of popcorn and an extra bag of popcorn.

(sorry. great album I did not know yet, but digging it thanks to you)

Power Spot is indeed very mighty — and quite possibly his most representative album. Like, if you just want one slab of vinyl to represent "What is Jon Hassell?", Power Spot is it.

My overall favorite is still his other ECM album from a few years back; Last Night the Moon Came Dropping its Clothes in the Street.

if you just want one slab of vinyl to represent "What is Jon Hassell?", Power Spot is it.


Just by coincidence, yesterday I was daydreaming about this very question, and how I would be unable to answer! I was imagining the goofy feeling of recommending Jon Hassell to someone and then being unable to give them a good starting point. I think I imagined just suggesting they start with Possible Musics so they could go ahead and check out his most well known album and save even better stuff for later. But Power Moves is probably an even better place to start.

Glad you like it LBI! My appreciation for Hassell’s music grows every time I listen

you guys checked this out, it rules: https://soundcloud.com/frasconimusic/sets/jon-hassell-group-1982

I think what marks out Power Spot is that it is a lot tighter and more explicitly rhythmically structured than the albums that precede it (Possible Musics, Dream Theory in Malaya etc.) but still very much exemplifies the ideas he was pursuing on those albums - so if you wanted an album that not only explained Hassell but also his influence on a lot of subsequent music it fulfills that role very handily.

I used to put "Wing Melodies" on a lot of mix-cds alongside stuff like Ricardo Villalobos and O'Rang and Laika and it fit very nicely in that context.

I like Last Night the Moon most too. Probably because it has a strong dub influence.

Of the 3-4 I've heard (including Power Spot, which I like), Listening to Pictures is my favourite. Here's to hoping he'll release another one soon.

Looks like the sequel will be coming out this summer, called Seeing Through Sound.

So thriled about it — Listening to Pictures is one of my favorite records of all time, and a favorite Hassell record.

(He mentions it at the end of this recent Aquarium Drunkard interview: https://aquariumdrunkard.com/2020/03/05/jon-hassell-the-aquarium-drunkard-interview/)

https://www.instagram.com/p/B_knIhkDfW6/?igshid=1qrr5tq9eqyz7

From his website:

Jon Hassell Needs Your Help

Jon Hassell is one of the most influential composers of the last 50 years. His invention of what he called ‘4th World Music’ opened the way for a fresh look at, and deeper respect for, the music of other cultures around the world. His recordings have had a big impact on other musicians, and, through them, have changed musical tastes dramatically. His unique intellectual contribution is also noteworthy: he is a tireless and articulate theorist as well as a great musician.

Jon is going through hard times now. I feel that many of us owe him a debt of gratitude, so perhaps making a contribution to this fund is a way we can thank him.

Brian Eno
London, April 28, 2020


One of the giants of modern music, trumpeter, and composer Jon Hassell has been a true innovator for decades and his influence has been incalculable. Now, at 83, because of long-term health issues, Jon is in a dire position and needs financial assistance to ensure a safe and sustainable living situation going forward. As Jon is in the highest risk group for COVID-19, the urgency of his condition has become even more acute in recent weeks.

To address his pressing needs, we--a group of Jon's family, friends, and collaborators--are reaching out to his audience and fan base around the world to ask for help. If you are a fan of Jon's music, we would greatly appreciate any contribution you can make at this extremely challenging moment. Thank you.

-De Fracia Evans, Uti Cleveland, Taska Cleveland, Rick Cox, Peter Freeman, Dan Schwartz, Robert Walsh, and Luke Schwartz

‘Murica.

New album Seeing Through Sound is out 24th July. Pre-orders are up now, and there's a single (Fearless) out in all the usual places...

That's awesome news, doubly so in light of his recent financial troubles and the fact that he's 83!

https://jonhassell.bandcamp.com/album/seeing-through-sound-pentimento-volume-two

new album is very nice

Compared to vol. 1, this one felt a little rushed to me, its pieces too blocky to allow for immersion. I need to spend more time with it.

it was recorded during the same sessions as vol 1 fwiw!

different but not lesser imo

the "pentimento" in the title that describes scraping paint off to see what an artist originally painted is how he approached this one in the studio apparently, but scraping bits of sound off, which might be what is giving you an impression of rushed?

I assume he used the same technique on vol. 1, where it worked wonders, but vol. 2 strikes me as more amateurish for some reason (wouldn't go so far as to call it Monkey Christ-ish, though!). I'll give it another spin later today.

I would listen to Monkey Christ - the album!

I can't stop listening to the new album, I think it's wonderful. Think I might prefer it to Volume 1. Fearless, Moons of Titan and Delicado are up there with his greatest works IMO. I love the smokey, late-night textures dissolved in layer upon layer of electronic processing.

I have no idea whether it is better or worse than vol 1 yet but it is certainly not a disappointment.

have any of you ever listened to Motohiko Hamase? 80s minimalist/ambient composer, new to me, who was reissued by WRWTFWW earlier this year. very big jon hassell RIYL. i'm still getting a handle on his music, but Anecdote (a live 1987 recording) is one that i can recommend for people on this thread:

https://wrwtfww.com/album/anecdote

(#Notes of Forestry and Technodrome are the other two being reissued - if anyone has thoughts about them, or knows anything about Motohiko Hamase, i'd love to hear it!)

New one is pretty different from Vol.1 at first listen but gorgeous all the same!

finally getting to this. strikes me as a lot different from listening to pictures on first impression. much more doodley and. . . idk, jammy? is that an okay word to apply to this music? in any case, i'll need to sit with it a bit more, but it's new jon hassell music, so i'm happy.

Notes of Forestry is super good as are Reminiscence and Intaglio. These latter two were re-recorded in 2018 and are excellent but I think the original versions eclipse the remade ones. I'm just getting to know Technodrome. It's slightly indebted to house / techno records of that era but actually is perhaps the most Hassell-esque of them all imo.

good lord, i listened to technodrome and notes of forestry back-to-back, and i am ruined. what a night

Listening to this now. FWIW, Andy Beta's (nice) review on Pitchfork says this:

Back in April, Brian Eno started a GoFundMe for Hassell, who as a cancer survivor is at high risk of severe COVID-19 infection. Hassell is now out of intensive care, but he’s still well short of his fundraising goal, and one wonders how much more music lies ahead for the octogenarian artist.

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/jon-hassell-seeing-through-sound-pentimento-volume-two/

Just to say that I think that the new album Seeing Through Sound - Pentimento Volume Two is absolutely brilliant. To me it sounds as if Brian Eno's organic ambient masterpiece On Land had been crossed with Nils Peter Molvaer's groundbreaking electric jazz album Khmer.

it's the first time a jon hassell album has done anything for me. it has not a lot to do with the first part. in-between a quantum leap has happened. there are these objets trouvès here and there (eg in rejkjavik). those haunting parts like in cool down coda. it's like another green world without the tunes. which obviously is better as it does not use itself up. my album of the year for the time being.

have any of you ever listened to Motohiko Hamase? 80s minimalist/ambient composer, new to me, who was reissued by WRWTFWW earlier this year. very big jon hassell RIYL. i'm still getting a handle on his music, but Anecdote (a live 1987 recording) is one that i can recommend for people on this thread:

https://wrwtfww.com/album/anecdote

― The GOAT Harold Land (Karl Malone), Wednesday, July 29, 2020 11:12 AM (one week ago) bookmarkflaglink

(#Notes of Forestry and Technodrome are the other two being reissued - if anyone has thoughts about them, or knows anything about Motohiko Hamase, i'd love to hear it!)

― The GOAT Harold Land (Karl Malone), Wednesday, July 29, 2020 11:14 AM (one week ago) bookmarkflaglink

New one is pretty different from Vol.1 at first listen but gorgeous all the same!

― SQUIRREL MEAT!! (Capitaine Jay Vee), Wednesday, July 29, 2020 12:35 PM (one week ago) bookmarkflaglink

finally getting to this. strikes me as a lot different from listening to pictures on first impression. much more doodley and. . . idk, jammy? is that an okay word to apply to this music? in any case, i'll need to sit with it a bit more, but it's new jon hassell music, so i'm happy.

― Totally different head. Totally. (Austin), Wednesday, July 29, 2020 3:42 PM (one week ago) bookmarkflaglink

Notes of Forestry is super good as are Reminiscence and Intaglio. These latter two were re-recorded in 2018 and are excellent but I think the original versions eclipse the remade ones. I'm just getting to know Technodrome. It's slightly indebted to house / techno records of that era but actually is perhaps the most Hassell-esque of them all imo.

― stirmonster, Wednesday, July 29, 2020 6:10 PM (one week ago) bookmarkflaglink

good lord, i listened to technodrome and notes of forestry back-to-back, and i am ruined. what a night

― The GOAT Harold Land (Karl Malone), Thursday, July 30, 2020 2:51 AM (one week ago) bookmarkflaglink

I have yet to hear Notes of Forestry or Technodrome but Anecdote is beautiful. Favorite recent discovery.

Trying to support my local so I ordered Seeing Through Sound from them but there's no telling when it will arrive

i didn't get around to listening to Seeing Through Sound until after my Motohiko Hamase binge. and when i finally did, it ruined me as well. these musicians are ruining me in the best way. the last track on Seeing Through Sound, "Timeless", is just incredible.

this new one is superb, it reminds me of VLadislav Delay in places!

*googles furiously*

sorry:
https://jonhassell.bandcamp.com/album/seeing-through-sound-pentimento-volume-two

the delay comparison makes sense to me. they both seem to form some esoteric nocturnal logic of their own, and i enjoy dozing off to them both.

whistleblower is the album i have in mind in particular

some of the tracks on this new one have that bubbling, percolating feel that I associate with classic Vladislav recs

"Timeless" in particular

xposts with sleeve

oh, i meant googling Vladislav! i know nothing about him, but i will definitely be checking them out too (heeding whispering karl's whistleblower recommendation!)

this thread rules imo

WHAT

OK you gotta go listen to Multila ASAP

Just checking Vol. 2 out right now for the first time, and hard agree re: V. Delay, esp on "Timeless"

(Hey Sleeve, I rushed into commenting without seeing you type the same)

Those long-tone strings combined with the stuttered choppy Sasu-y/Delay textures on that track are sounding really sweet to me, and nicely distinct in terms of Hassell himself seemingly laying out/no harmonized trumpet

Agreed on the Delay comparison - this album reminds me in part of ‘Nordub’, his recent collaboration with Nils Petter Molvaer and Sly & Robbie.

His WHAT

oh yeah, Nordub is amazing

thread delivers!

so, hey yeah: jammed seeing through sound again this morning and it does get better with every play. i can't say which of the more recent ones i prefer at this point. both are stellar in their own respective ways.

but to the present topic, i was curious and decided to check the nordub album and mist concur: this is also very good.

so, yeah:

thread delivers!

― sleeve, Tuesday, August 11, 2020 3:18 PM

i love when the thread delivers

loving nordub as well! and looks like vladislav delay released another album with sly + robbie today!

kings

loving nordub as well! and looks like vladislav delay released another album with sly + robbie today!

― diamonddave85​​ (diamonddave85), Friday, August 21, 2020 8:49 AM

dude what

hahaha

_thread delivers_

info

spotify

Per a statement from his family, Hassell passed this morning.

Oh no. :(((

RIP

I was naïvely looking forward to his next album – it didn't even occur to me that Seeing Through Sound could be the last.

damn RIP

RIP

Oh shit no way

that’s a big one - RIP to a total legend

RIP, boo, loved those last few

Rest In Peace. He was on top to the very last, just a legend

rip. great last album

The one before that, too! And I haven’t even listened to the one before that, yet. But still clearly on top of his game and exploring new territory to the very end. That’s all I could hope for anyone

no!!!!

This was the statement, BTW:

PRESS STATEMENT from Jon Hassell's Family
JULY 26, 2021
Family Statement:
Our beloved Jon M. Hassell - iconic trumpet player, author, and composer - has passed away at the age of 84 years on June 26th 2021. After a little more than a year of fighting through health complications, Jon died peacefully in the early morning hours of natural causes. His final days were surrounded by family and loved ones who celebrated with him the lifetime of contributions he gave to this world– personally and professionally. He cherished life and leaving this world was a struggle as there was much more he wished to share in music, philosophy, and writing.
It was his great joy to be able to compose and produce music until the end. We thank all those who contributed to ensuring that he was able to continue expressing his ideas through his final days and maintain a quality end of life.
Jon Hassell was able to leave behind many gifts. We are excited and committed to sharing those ongoing with his fans across time and support his enduring legacy. All donations to Jon Hassell’s GoFundMe will allow the tremendous personal archive of his music, much unreleased, to be preserved and shared with the world for years to come. We also hope to provide philanthropic gifts of scholarship and contributions to issues close to Jon’s heart, like supporting the working rights of musicians.
As Jon is now free of a constricting body, he is liberated to be in his musical soul and will continue to play in the Fourth World. We hope you find solace in his words and dreams for this earthly place he now leaves behind. We hold him, and you, in this loss and grief.
FOURTH WORLD IS
A KIND OF PHILOSOPHICAL GUIDELINE, A CREATIVE POSTURE, DIRECTED TOWARDS THE CONDITIONS CREATED BY THE INTERSECTION OF TECHNOLOGY WITH INDIGINOUS MUSIC AND CULTURE.
THE UNDERLYING GOAL IS TO PROVIDE A KIND OF CREATIVE MIDWIFERY TO THE INEVITABLE MERGING OF CULTURES WHILE PROVIDING AN ANTIDOTE TO A GLOBAL "MONOCULTURE" CREATED BY MEDIA COLONIZATION.
THE UNDERLYING PREMISE IS THAT EACH INDIGENOUS PEOPLES' MUSIC AND CULTURE - THE RESULT OF THEIR UNIQUE RESPONSE TO THEIR UNIQUE NATURAL ENVIRONMENT - FUNCTIONS IN THE SAME WAY AS, AS AN "ELEMENT" IN THE PERIODIC TABLE OF CHEMISTRY: AS PURE BUILDING BLOCKS FROM WHICH ALL OTHER "CULTURAL COMPOUNDS" WILL ARISE.
IN OTHER WORDS, THESE CULTURES ARE OUR "VOCABULARY" IN TRYING TO THINK ABOUT WAYS TO RESPOND TO OUR PLACE IN THE NEW GEOGRAPHY CREATED BY OUR MEDIA WORLD, AND MUST BE RESPECTED RELATIVE TO THEIR IMPORTANCE TO OUR SURVIVAL.
Jon Hassell
####

goddamn

and yeah, was still making great music. but also left behind a ton of great records i don’t imagine i’ll ever really get tired of listening to

rip

We will never hear another person like him ever again.

Absolute legend. Respect.

So sad.

I keep discovering new and unexplored (by me) corners of his work. I had been listening to The Surgeon of the Nightsky Restores Dead Things By The Power of Sound (from the late 80s) just this week - what an amazing record.

As Jon is now free of a constricting body, he is liberated to be in his musical soul and will continue to play in the Fourth World.

Oh shit, RIP

Ah shit. RIP. What a genius.

Oh no! RIP Jon ;_;

RIP Jon. That was a lovely statement from his family

he made so many ridiculously good albums you can go through decades of his work without finding anything shit, Fascinoma is a personal fave of mine.

Ronu Majumdar's "Hollow Bamboo" album on the Water Lily label has a real nice guest spot:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zeaTh0f0E4

New York Times w/ details I didn’t know:

Fascinated by electronic music, he made tape collages and won a grant to study with the avant-garde composer Karlheinz Stockhausen for two years in Cologne, Germany. His classmates included musicians who would go on to start the German band Can; he took LSD with them

I knew he studied with Stockhausen around the same time as Holger Czukay, didn't know about the LSD though!

... and David Johnson, who was in the original line-up of Can.

RIP. what a life.

84 is pretty good. But given that he was creating music at such a high level, it’s hard not to feel a little sadder about this. His last few records betrayed no signs of slowing down whatsoever – in retrospect, I find it remarkable that his music sounded every bit as exotic, brooding and other to the very end.

RIP to one of the greats.

Have we ever polled his albums? I only get this topic when using the search.

The Surgeon of the Nightsky Restores Dead Things by the Power of Sound----

not seeing this one on Spotify. Author/critic Jon Savage says it's a fave of his

It's wonderful. Listen to it a lot.

Nice tribute mix from Low Light: https://www.mixcloud.com/lowlight/last-night-the-moon-came-a-tribute-to-john-hassell/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGFJhExa4Qc

Chaser:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbcuISx7vDk

I miss this guy already

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0sjEnihSdI

"caracas night september 11, 1975"

Highly recommended tribute: https://astralindustries.bandcamp.com/album/ai-32-the-fifth-world-recordings

Some live stuff coming out — sounds pretty pretty good ...

https://jonhassell.bandcamp.com/

just reading up on some of his credits, turns out he played on a pair of duncan sheik tracks? sounds like a bad david sylvian song hxxps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISt0LotIIEo

the link between bad 90s radio rock and new weird america that ilm needed today

Some live stuff coming out — sounds pretty pretty good ...

https://jonhassell.bandcamp.com🕸/

Just now relistening to Brilliant Trees for the first time in a while and his tone when he first appears is unmistakable.

aahhhh xpost that's too bad re:forthcoming live stuff. that material *is* worth revisiting. this is the cd edition i picked up years ago and it's p spiff.

also yes ned! love him so much on that material. words with the shaman probably already mentioned as such, but i am officially stating my vote for "classic hassell" across the board for all of the sylvian collabs. stating the obvious perhaps, but it's nice to be right for once!

sounds like a bad david sylvian song

funny because one of the few things I know about duncan shiek is that he's a big sylvian fan and stated in interviews after Barely Breathing became a huge hit that he was surprised to get any commercial success as he thought of himself as a Sylvian type.

Never understood why Alfred had such a bad reaction to Brilliant Trees. Hassell’s work there (and on Words w the Shaman which was stapled to my CD edition) is so, so good.

Even though I love that he went out on top, I miss this guy.

duncan shiek is that he's a big sylvian fan

yeah i definitely got that sense after listening to the two tracks with hassell and almost made me want to check out some of his other stuff to see if he had some good sylvian-inspired deep cuts

aka/dabari/java >>>>>>

decided to listen through the whole catalog and spend time with some of his records i've only glancingly heard and wow what a knockout

That one is killer. A discography listen sounds just the thing. Lately, I've been listening to *Last Night the Moon* and goddamn.

agreed, so great, very subtle/minimal

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2CO0kFhjwE

i'm glad the living city was given its own release. i don't know that i would've ever heard it otherwise and it's one of the very best hassell things

First heard Hassell w/his track Amsterdam Blue (Cortege) on the soundtrack for the The Million Dollar Hotel. I don't think it appeared anywhere else.

he was a genius, such a rich catalog.

Hadn't heard *The Living City* before. Some deep weirdness going on in there. The bassline on the opening track is like having a fly in a tooth cavity.

I like Earthquake Island though some don't

Well, they're wrong, it's great!

I’ve been on an Eno trip of late and pouring back through his catalogue with Hassell: Possible Musics, Dream Theory in Malaya, Power Spot, Surgeon of the Nightsky, and Flash of the Spirit with Farafina. I’ve always been sort of fascinated by their relationship. Eno got the lion’s share of the credit for the first one and Hassell felt betrayed by Bush of Ghosts. And even though Hassell ended up building a reputation mostly separate from Eno, they continued collaborating and Eno produced or co-produced all but one of his 80s records (Aka/Dabari/Java, credited to Lanois, the most sample-heavy and my current favorite). Supposedly Eno and Hassell would spend time after each tour culling tapes to use for the next album.

Then there’s Living City – the live performance at the World Financial Center’s Winter Garden atrium where Hassell and band performed to an audio-visual installation of Eno’s, which the latter mixed live in surround for 200(!) speakers and included recordings of nature sounds and Pygmy tribes from Cameroon. One review somewhat hilariously described the experience as “tripping on ayahuasca while being led through a tropical rainforest by Miles Davis.”

The video is here, tho perhaps I shared it upthread. In many ways, it’s the culmination of their decade-long collaboration and, I believe, the last time they worked together.

Lastly, Perfect Sound Forever did a terrific tribute to Hassell after he passed away in 2021, with Jason Gross interviewing a bunch of his longtime collaborators – musicians, his engineer and manager. It’s fascinating stuff—and honestly pretty grim at the end—but it gives a great series of perspectives on how he worked:

https://www.furious.com/~furious/perfect/jonhassellrip.html

https://www.furious.com/~furious/perfect/jonhassellrip2.html

Aka/Dabari/Java totally rules

According to his manager that record was made with a Fairlight, I had no idea.

There’s a great Hassell quote shared by one of his guys in there, maybe Rick Cox, that he had to learn how to sample like three or four times because just as he’d get the hang of the latest technology, it would change again.