Jon Hassell - Seeing Through Sound (Pentimento 2) - LP/CD/DD
The second in a series of Pentimento volumes, Seeing Through Sound follows 2018's superb assemblage, Listening To Pictures (reviewed here). Embedded in the same Fourth World lineage of just about all of his remarkable output, STS sounds like it was conceived in the deepest recesses of the South American jungle, the dunes of the Kalahari and the fjords of Scandanavia.
A truly global experience, this album perhaps comes closest to his work with Brian Eno than any other, offering up gently pattering percussion, humid atmospherics and that sweet Hassell trademark exhaled from his treated, muted and mutated trumpet. Opener Fearless bobs and weaves for an eight minutes that feels like four, while the lunar soundscapes of Moons of Titan effortlessly trickles downstream to a better place than you were five minutes previously.
What makes this and its sister record issued two years ago all the more spellbinding is Jon Hassell has swept past 80 years old. He's tackled cancer and swerved the pandemic so far and, with a little help from friend Brian Eno, managed to survive these times. But he's not in a good way - his Go Fund Me page has passed 40% of its total - donate here https://www.gofundme.com/f/jon-hassell-fund - but a few record sales wouldn't go amiss (his debut Vernal Equinox was reissued this year too).
If you've invested in Hassell's otherworldly blend of jazz and electronica before, you don't me to tell you that this is as exploratory and exemplary as it gets. There's the aforementioned (and gorgeous) opening tracks, plus the itchy, edgy Reykjavik, the haunting vignette Cool Down Coda and the sinister sci-fi soundgrab Lunar that incorporates stereophonic sweeps of Hassell's trumpet, discordant drones and the merest of pulsing drum patterns.
The aptly-titled Timeless is perhaps the busiest of the tracks with a minuteae of African drum and dubbed-up generated electronic triggers hurrying the expansive piece along. Crepuscular and audibly narcotic.
8/10