Vernal Equinox
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Jon Hassell
Vernal Equinox
[ Ndeya / CD ]
Release Date: Friday 20 March 2020
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Jon Hassell's 1977 solo debut, Vernal Equinox offered the first glimpse into the sound that would become known as Fourth World music - a pioneering blend of electronics and global music influences, drawing on ambient, jazz and minimalism, alongside harmonies and traditional instruments from across Africa and Asia.
Hassell's trademark FX-soaked trumpet is carefully embellished by a studio ensemble including the master percussionist Naná Vasconcelos and lead synthesizer player David Rosenboom (who played viola on the 1968 recording of Terry Riley's In C). In 1976, synthesizers were far from standard studio equipment, and most of Vernal Equinox was recorded at Toronto's York University, where Rosenboom was the director of the well-equipped Electronic Media Studios and Laboratory of Experimental Aesthetics. The result is a work of outstanding beauty.
Remastered from the original tapes, and available for the first time in over four decades on vinyl and 30 years on CD.
Sleevenotes by Brian Eno and Jon Hassell himself.
The second release on Hassell's own label, Ndeya, following on from his 2018 album Listening to Pictures.
"Jon Hassell's 1980 album Fourth World, Vol. 1: Possible Musics, produced alongside Brian Eno, is perhaps the most common entry point in the trumpeter's catalog, arriving during the latter's ascendance as a pop theorist and alchemist. But Hassell's 1977 debut contains many of the same ideas in a more muted and subtle form. Inspired by raga music, particularly the work of the vocalist Pandit Pran Nath, Hassell processes his trumpet sound and focuses on notes that change in tiny increments, giving his melodies a slippery quality where you're never quite sure where they are coming from or where they might go next. The background is filled with quiet twitches of rattles and bells, gurgling talking drum, and snippets of bird songs, creating a bed of sound that is hard to pin down but easy to absorb as a whole. Sources stretch in all directions, from the "Shhh/Peaceful" jazz of Miles Davis to Indian classical music to twinkling New Age, but the music's refusal to be any one thing makes each listen feel like the first one." - 50 Best Ambient Albums of All Time Pitchfork
"A perfectly realised manifesto" - The Vinyl Factory
Tracks:
Toucan Ocean
Viva Shona
Hex
Blues Nile
Vernal Equinox
Caracas Night September 11, 1975
