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REVIEWS "Miles Davis and Jon Hassell are both trumpet players who have transcended the instrument's inherent limitations and now use it as flexibly, as expressively and as intimately as a great singer uses his voice. They are both visionary composers who use their knowledge of American traditions and the musics of the world to create vivid landscapes that seem to palpitate with a life of their own. They are both musicians with serious reputations who have nevertheless crossed the boundaries that separate 'art' and 'popular' music. "NEW YORK TIMES"
"Hassell has long been admired for his work with Brian Eno, the Peters Gabriel
and Sellars and the Kronos Quartet ... If there were any justice, Hassell's 10
majestic albums would already be broadcast on their own radio and cable stations
24 hours a day : they're the secret sound track of our public and private lives."
"Face it, it's all been said about Hassell before, but perhaps this, at least, is
worth restating: Jon Hassell's ideas and techniques have so thoroughly permeated
lo- and hi-brow contemporary electronic music, albeit often in a third or fourth
hand way...that it's difficult to think what contemporary music would sound like
without his influence. I repeat: there's categorically no doubt that Hassell has
had as an important effect on contemporary music as Miles Davis or Jimi Hendrix
or James Brown or the Velvet Underground."
"Jon Hassell is one of the world's most innovative musicians and one of today's most
influential composers. His music has established a genre that goes beyond the notions
of jazz, neo-classicism, new music or new age. Jon Hassell's concept of Fourth World
Music transcends the so-called 'primitive' and the so-called 'futurist' by seamlessly
uniting traditional rhythmic and melodic concepts with recombinant aesthetics made
possible by the creations of high technology."
"...work of quite extraordinary beauty ... This pan-cultural music swirls and rises
like smoke ... Hassell blends his experiences in such a way that the components.
African drumming, Indian microtonality, Balinese tranquility; make a new palette
while forfeiting none of the individual colors."
"...Extraordinary, otherworldly music..." |