Originally published in Arthur No. 18 (Sept. 2005)
The timbre of Jon Hassell’s effects-drenched trumpet is unmistakable. There’s nothing else like it. Imagine being a painter who stumbled on a color — some untried combination of pigments — that no one had ever seen before, and you get an idea of the ear-opening shock of Hassell’s music. The nebulous sound of Hassell’s tricked-out trumpet has almost no attack whatsoever. The tones swell and bloom. It’s as if the swarming and droning music is the product of some extreme humidity. Hassell’s visionary approach to playing and composing has earned him admirers and collaborators in practically every genre — jazz, pop, classical, experimental and world music. Even if you’ve never heard of him, you may already have several recordings of Jon Hassell’s music.
On Remain in Light, Talking Heads’ landmark 1980 Brian Eno-produced record, Hassell provided the horn arrangement and trumpet on “Houses in Motion.” If you’re not paying attention you might not hear the restrained punctuated trumpet dabs that Hassell applies in the verses, but you can’t miss his solo — it’s part elephantine blast, part storm ululation and part muezzin’s call.
Hassell’s “Pano Da Costa” (Cloth from the Coast) is performed by the Kronos Quartet on their 1987 release White Man Sleeps. The quartet takes inspiration from the sound of Hassell’s horn, gamely mimicking the barometrically charged tone, the insectoid flutters and the dizzy phrasing. Strong percussion often propels Hassell’s music, and with shakers, rattles and aggressive bowing, Kronos conjure the right friction and mystery.
Along with numerous other Eno projects, Hassell appears on Ambient 4: On Land, and his horn supplies that ominous touch that keeps Eno’s ambient music from being solely soothing. Hassell helps to unsettle things. (If you can fathom this, Hassell also plays on records by k.d. Lang, Ani DiFranco, Manhattan Transfer, Baaba Maal and Bjork, and many others. If you’re looking to dig deeper, Hassell has scads of other projects worth checking out, if you can find them.)
Years before West Africa became the favorite stomping ground of world music collaboratists and record producers, Hassell took up the idea. This collaboration was a logical extension of Hassell’s philosophy of Fourth World music. On 1993’s Flash of the Spirit, Hassell teamed up with Farafina, an excellent percussion and balafon group from Burkina Faso. The Eno-produced record, which draws its title from scholar Robert Farris Thompson’s legendary study of Africanisms in the New World, shows how suitable the pairing of West African polyrhythm, tumbling phrasing, call-and-response and all-around kinetic music energy is with Hassell’s approach.
One of Hassell’s most haunting records is Dream Theory in Malaya, the second volume of “Fourth World” collaborations with Eno (volume one is also worth seeking out). Thick with rhythms made from the sounds of splashing water, hypnotic gongs and the earthy ping of pottery drums, the music here achieves a shamanic intensity. It’s both startling and soothing somehow.
Maarifa Street, out this year, is a fitting cap to a roundup of Hassell’s recordings. With dubbed-out effects and clubby rhythms, Hassell summons up On the Corner or Bitches Brew-era Miles Davis, folded in with bits of Arabic singing and Senegalese drumming. Like Hassell’s aesthetic, it’s smart, expansive, experimental, global, and, most of all, ecstatic.
