Jon Hassell - Earthquake Island (1978, CD release in 1989)

This beautiful album played an important part in the development of world and fusion music.

It was recorded in 1978, two years before the meeting with Brian Eno and the release of Fourth World Vol. 1. Possible Music. Jon Hassell already found his unique trumpet sound and style, inspired by the vocal lessons of his master Pandit Pran Nath, with its fluid vocal modulations and its beautiful and sensual glissendi effects.

Earthquake Island is a sunny place where musicians from India, Africa and Brazil meet, share and exchange their sounds and musical technics, and blend different musical languages, such as electronics, minimalism, ethnic musics and jazz.

From India, Badal Roy, a former member of Miles Davis and John McLaughin, plays tablas. From Brazil, Claudio Ferreira and Ricardo Silveira, two exceptional guitarists. In this record, one can also find Miroslav Vitous, a member of Weather Report. Nana Vasconcelos, who played with Jean-Luc Ponty and Milton Nascimento, brings his unique musical toys, such as congas, beerembau and a lot of other percussions. Clarice Taylor, an Afro-American, is only vocalist of the album.

Earthquake Island is a beautiful album, with a new sound, a new synthesis of musical trends, a new feeling, a new vibe, sensual, warm, primitive and avant-garde at the same time...

link: mp3 / 320

JHEaIs.zip

password: olduvai

Jon Hassell / Farafina - Flash of the Spirit (1988)

Jon Hassell, who played a pioneering part in the exploration of the Fourth World musics, meets Farafina, a unique band of African musicians from Burkina Faso.  Founded in the early '80s, Farafina plays traditional music, inspired by the dances and songs of their medecine men, mixing together balafons, flutes and koras.  Farafina is still a very active band, teaching traditional musics to young African people, linking traditions with modernity, creating new musical landscapes where the instruments and the knowledge from the past meet digital technologies.

Flash of the Spirit is one of the albums who played a very important part in the development of the world music concept and scene.

Jon Hassell's unique trumpet sound meets African traditionnal musics, in this beautiful album co-produced by Brian Eno, Daniel Lanois.

The sound and the feeling are unique, the message is generous: music is a shared language, beyond all the borders. Feeling, understanding, sharing, respect, friendship are the key-words of this unique joint-venture.

One can just admire the sincerity and involvement of Jon Hassell... This Ambient-African music remains a real UFO in the sky of new musics...

Link: mp3 / 320

FJH-FofS.zip

password: olduvai

Jon Hassell / I Magazzini - Sulla Strada (1982/1995)

This rare album is a soundtrack composed by Jon Hassell for a theatrical play written by Federico Tiezzi from texts by Jack Kerouac, and performed at La Biennale in Venice, at the Teatro Malibran on May 28th 1982. The CD was released by "Materiali Sonori" in 1995.

In the booklet, Jon Hassell comments upon his musical project: "The style of music which I call "Fourth World" is a continual exploration of ways in which exotic musics from the tribal cultures of the Southern Hemisphere might be fused with the technological possibilities of the Western world (primitive future). It is an attempt to create music which dissolves the dichotomy between the structural and the sensual (classical and popular in western terms). 

The music for Sulla Strada is partially inspired by cerimonial music of the Beti and Bemileke of Cameroon. This is blended with other compositional and less geographically-specific elements in an attent to create a kind of musical scenery which is not entirely "primitive", not entirely "future", but some place impossible to locate either chronogically or geographically. (...)

The aim is to create a dense, ritualized sound atmosphere in which the stage action might take place and be formed within, in the same way that the density of water can be said to form the movements of a swimmer".

Jon Hassell (trumpet, synth, tapes) is accompanied by Nana Vasconcelos (udu drum), Michael Brook (guitar and mix),  Miguel Frasconi (percussion). 

Italian voices can be heard sometimes, but the nine tracks of this album offer beautiful and hypnotical climates, where loops, percussions and synthesizers create the dense and ritualized atmosphere Jon Hassell mentions in his comments...

A rare album by one of the most important musician and composer of the ambient planet...

link: mp3 / 320

JHSs1.zip

JHSs2.zip

password: olduvai