by
Jon Hassell
- Record Label: Ndeya
- Release Date: Jul 24, 2020
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Aug 25, 2020For all its conceptual maximalism, gen(r)e-splicing and densely irregular time layering, the compositions here are supremely considered pieces of continuously mutating gracefulness, spacious and expansive, stretched like a long fade-out into timelessness. Equally grounded and spaced out, on Seeing Through Sound Hassell has found an ideal balance of psychoacoustic and compositional values, the most sublime synthesis of tone magic and artistic craft.
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Aug 18, 2020The ambience is softer, the lights are dim, the rhythms echoing in the distance. While his first release, 1977's Vernal Equinox, just re-issued this year, might make the perfect place to start on a long journey with Hassell's work, this record will do just as well.
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MojoAug 6, 2020This is jazz in its loosest, least bridled sense, blurred to shimmering, impressionistic effect. [Aug 2020, p.91]
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Aug 6, 2020Seeing Through Sound (Pentimento Volume Two) is the far warmer of the two works, despite titles that allude to Iceland and Saturn’s frozen moons. In its most mesmerizing moments, Hassell slips into memoirist mode, allowing old tropes from his past to flicker back to life.
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UncutAug 6, 2020Hassell's immediately recognisable trumpet-playing--a tone that's feathery, flute-like, wheezing, weathered--binds everything together. [Sep 2020, p.31]
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Aug 6, 2020Seeing Through Sound doesn’t quite enrapture like Hassell’s 1977 debut Vernal Equinox or Fourth World, Vol. 1: Possible Musics, his renowned collaboration with Brian Eno, but it’s a satisfying, fully invested work.