Listening To Pictures (Pentimento Volume One)

pen·ti·men·to / noun Reappearance in a painting of earlier images, forms, or strokes that have been changed and painted over. First new album in nine years by a musical visionary and hugely influential figure in new music. 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.

On his first album in nine years, the Los Angeles trumpeter-composer sounds like he’s remixing himself, taking apart his past 40 years of work and reassembling it for the present moment.

★★★★☆

Now in his ninth decade, trumpeter, composer, and sonic conceptualist Jon Hassell remains a restless musical explorer.

Over the last few years, Jon Hassell has re-released his two most celebrated and groundbreaking albums — 1980's Fourth World, Vol. 1 and 198...

At 81, trumpeter Jon Hassell continues to push his patented Fourth World sound forward.

Hassell’s ‘fourth world’ fusion of hi-tech minimalism with world rhythms proves the 81-year-old is still experimental after all these years