Jon Hassell -- Classic Or Dud?

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.

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.