First track from the new Jon Hassell album 'Listening To Pictures (Pentimento Volume One)' - Out now:
http://smarturl.it/listeningtopictures

pen·ti·men·to / noun
Reappearance in a painting of earlier images, forms, or strokes that have been changed and painted over.

Forty years since its creation, Jon Hassell's Fourth World aesthetic remains a powerful influence on modern electronic music. Continuing his lifelong exploration of the possibilities of recombination and musical gene-splicing, fragments of performance are sampled, looped, overdubbed and re-arranged into beguiling unexpected shapes. Hassell applies the painterly technique of ‘pentimento’ to the arrangements, teasing out texture by the overlaying of sound upon sound, or a carefully timed reveal of the delicate bones pinning the frame of a track together.

The release of this new album also sees the launch of Jon’s own label, Ndeya (pronounced “in-day-ya”), which will be a home for new work as well as well as selected archival releases, including re-presses of classic sides and some astonishing unreleased music.

FURTHER READING ON JON HASSELL:

Fourth World in the 21st century: https://www.residentadvisor.net/features/2984
Brian Eno on Jon Hassell: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2007/nov/09/jazz.urban
https://www.jonhassell.com/

Jon Hassell - Dreaming

Second track from the new Jon Hassell album 'Listening To Pictures (Pentimento Volume One)' - Out now:
smarturl.it/listeningtopictures

Following the news last month of the first album in nine years by Jon Hassell, Ndeya Records is proud to share the second piece of music from Listening To Pictures (Pentimento Volume One). Whereas first track “Dreaming” utilised a repetitive, pulsating structure of lush texture, “Pastorale Vassant” deploys a different style with it’s skittering, insectoid, electronic gamelan sound. 

It has also recently been announced that to coincide with the release of the album, Jon will be making a rare appearance in New York City, reading excerpts from his forthcoming book The North And South Of You. The writing expands on some of the thinking that has underpinned his musical work for the last 40 years since he coined the term ‘Fourth World’ to describe his graceful interface of deep tradition with new technologies.
https://issueprojectroom.org/event/jon-hassell-riffs-hyperopia-and-music

JON HASSELL ON “PASTORALE VASSANT”:
"Hillside Pastorale" in the Catalan dialect of Spain.

I was staying in Deya, on the island of Mallorca at Mati Klarwein's house where flocks of goats roamed in the hills at night, each one with a slightly different neck bell. One balmy Summer midnight I stayed awake to record this floating, constantly-changing "gamelan" that enters in the distant background halfway into the piece.

Asked to say something about the piece, I listened again and, sure enough - "Twittering Machine" - the title of a Paul Klee painting of 1922 popped into my mind. Although I knew his work for years and his Pedagogical Sketchbook was in my library, the "twittering" title was what stuck to me and I had only a vague memory of the painting. But when I looked at the painting while listening I was amazed at how they reflected off one another in a kind of unintended "tone-painting" way (where the picture sounds like the music and vice-versa).

This highlights the difference in "Listening to Pictures" as the title of the record and "listening to pictures" programatically (i.e., does the music paint the picture like the title?)
 
Another notable comparison here is how two possible angles on "listening" appear:
1) programmatically - where features of the "painting" are being evoked as in "tone painting." (Debussy - La Mer)
2) in the meaning of the title, Listening to Pictures, where vertical listening facilitates perception of shapes and a heightened consciousness of the entire audio spectrum which leads to your own "internal paintings."

NOTE: THESE ARE NOT MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE!!

© 2018 jon hassell

Jon Hassell - Pastorale Vassant

'Fearless' taken from the forthcoming Jon Hassell album 'Seeing Through Sound (Pentimento Volume Two)' out July 24 on NDEYA.

Pre-order here: https://ndeya.ffm.to/seeingthroughsound

FURTHER READING ON JON HASSELL:
Fourth World in the 21st century: www.residentadvisor.net/features/2984
Brian Eno on Jon Hassell: www.theguardian.com/music/2007/nov/09/jazz.urban

https://jonhassell.com/
https://jonhassell.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/OfficialJonHassell/
https://twitter.com/ndeyarecords
https://www.instagram.com/ndeya_records/

Jon Hassell | Fearless

From the album Seeing Through Sound (Pentimento Volume Two), released on Ndeya 24 July 2020 https://ndeya.ffm.to/seeingthroughsound

jonhassell.com/
jonhassell.bandcamp.com/
www.facebook.com/OfficialJonHassell/
twitter.com/ndeyarecords
www.instagram.com/ndeya_records/

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