by Jon Hassell
Release Date: 02 June 2014
Format: LP Double Vinyl
Label: All Saints Records
£16.99
Jon Hassell City: Works Of Fiction Limited Vinyl 2LP Set + Download
Overview:
· Combining his trademark brand of Fourth World fusion with new influences from the emerging hip hop scene, this 1990 album is a landmark release in Jon Hassell’s career to date. Futuristic sci fi funk with a completely melted production aesthetic - instruments and samples blur into one another in the manner of the best dub records.
· The vinyl edition features the original album re-cut as a double album for extra wide grooves and improved bass response (the original issue had an hour of music squeezed onto a single piece of vinyl) and a download card with access to the audio content of all three discs.
· “Hassell’s incredible music simulates the individual adrift, saturated to the point of collapse by the city in its fractured intensity. The dense polyrhythmic undergrowth,
the oblique glimmers of synth, the apprehensive funk-pulse, Hassell’s woozy, hieroglyphic trumpet, the moth-mad whirr of guitar (Chic on PCP), create the impression of being dazed and distracted by light glancing off surfaces, by indecipherable sounds coming at you from every angle.” - Simon Reynolds (author of ‘Retromania’, ‘Rip It Up & Start Again’ & ‘Energy Flash’)
· A trumpet player, composer and musical conceptualist, Jon Hassell’s career bisects a multitude of strands in the history of the avant-garde and the development of genuinely new forms of music. Having studied under Karl-Heinz Stockhausen in Cologne (alongside future members of the band Can), he played on the original recording of Terry Riley’s ‘In C’ (1968), was part of La Monte Young’s Theatre Of
Eternal Music and studied Kiranic singing with Pandit Pran Nath, all of which informed his own instrumental technique and treatment of the trumpet with various electronic
effects.
· A growing interest in the indigenous music of other cultures led to the invention of his ‘Fourth World’ blend of different styles, first heard on albums such as ‘Vernal
Equinox’ and ‘Earthquake Island’ in the late-1970s. These caught the ear of Brian Eno, who collaborated with Hassell on the ‘Possible Musics’ album and used many of the Fourth World ideas on his ‘My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts’ album with David Byrne.
· Jon has played on albums by artists including Talking Heads (the seminal ‘Remain In Light’), Peter Gabriel and Bjork, composed film soundtracks and contributed to theatre works. He continues to tour and make new music and he is currently collaborating with techno legends Moritz Von Oswald and Carl Craig for a proposed album on Tresor Records.
Featured Tracks:
Disc: 1
1. Voiceprint (Blind from the Facts)
2. Pagan
3. Mombasa
4. Tikal
5. In the City of Red Dust
Disc: 2
1. Rain
2. Ba-ya-D
3. Warriors
4. Out of Adedara
Release Date: 20 March 2020
Format: LP Vinyl
Label: Ndeya
£18.99
