Review: The Jon Hassell retrospective series from Ndeya Records continues with 'Further Fictions', one of the recent three to explore the visionary composer and performer's ideas centring around the idea of the Fourth World. Further Fictions is a double CD anthology of the music on the vinyl editions, with a disc devoted to each album in hardbound book style packaging and an extensive booklet containing sleevenotes and archival images.
Review: The Jon Hassell retrospective series from Ndeya Records continues with 'The Living City', which captures the late composer at his creative peak, performing live at the renowned Winter Garden concert hall in New York in the 1980s. Forming something of an escape from his jazz-influenced ambient works, this performance instead shows off Hassell's interest in the popularity of sampling hip-hop at the time. With influences from Public Enemy to Teo Macero, this is a whirlwind of sampled noise and snippets, which all continually loop and circle back on each other in a mood of mild yet evocative madness.
Review: Two years ago, Jon Hassell made more than a few jaws drop with "Listening To Pictures (Pentimento Volume 1)", the genre-bending trumpeter and composer's first studio album in nine years. On that album, he effortlessly updated his trademark "Fourth World" sound - a decidedly cosmic, impossible-to-pigeonhole mix of traditional, otherworldly, exotic and cutting-edge sounds - for a new era. He takes a similar approach on this "companion album", somehow fusing experimental jazz, disparate global sounds, ambient, electronica and digi-dub in a myriad of thrilling, boundary blurring ways. It's a startling piece of work and one that defiantly rewards repeat listens, but then we expect nothing less from someone of Hassell's skill and standing. Recommended.
Review: Reissues don't come more significant than this. Jon Hassell's work new and old has been enjoying plentiful appraisal in recent years, with his outlook on Fourth World music finding fresh relevance with a modern crop of artists. While much of his catalogue has been given a fresh lease of life, they've been saving one of his most seminal works. Vernal Equinox was originally released in 1978, one of Hassell's first albums alongside Earthquake Island. It's essentially the blueprint for outernational music - a heady brew of global signifiers stewing together in one unclassifiable pot marked out only by Hassell's inimitable trumpet style. From ambient heads to sonic explorers, you won't want to miss the chance to own this most precious of albums.
Review: Since the release of Jon Hassell's last album in 2009, there's been an upsurge in interest in the "Fourth World" style he pioneered alongside Brian Eno way back in 1980. It seems rather fitting, then, that the 81 year-old trumpeter turned experimentalist has returned to show the pretenders how it should be done. Listening To Pictures (Pentimento Volume 1) is every bit as alluring as you'd expect, with Hassell delivering thrilling new soundscapes that pull the Fourth World template (think combinations of American minimalism, ethnic styles from around the world, advanced electronics and manipulated trumpet sounds) in a variety of directions. It's in turns trippy, hypnotic, beautiful, poignant and otherworldly, with each ambient composition being accompanied by another where Hassell draws influence from contemporary IDM or drowsy experimental jazz.
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