- In the wake of many contemporary electronic artists and DJs citing the Fourth World concept as influential, Jon Hassell returns forty years since its creation with his first new album in almost a decade to rightly take his place as the sound's originator.
- Having started off his musical career studying under Karlheinz Stockhausen and producing his earliest recordings in collaboration with Terry Riley and La Monte Young, fold into that his groundbreaking ambient recordings with Brian Eno, and it goes without saying Jon Hassell is one of the most important artists of his generation. The album's first single Dreaming perfectly sets the tone with his trumpet notes morphing themselves like liquid around the free rotation rhythms, harvesting an equinox of dream theory jazz.
- Listening to Pictures (Pentimento Volume One) launches his new imprint Ndeya, a platform set up by Jon to explore the outer reaches of his Fourth World sound and also to act as a vehicle that will venture far beyond its borders.
Listening to Pictures is 40 minutes of nuanced, shimmering impressionism,
understated yet intensely powerful. Fragments of performance are sampled and
manipulated into startlingly unexpected forms. Shape-shifting is what Hassell
has always done, of course, but on Listening to Pictures he has taken the
practice to a new level.
5/5 All About Jazz
Hassell is making the most forward-looking and experimental music of his
career. Dense, endlessly mutating music that rewards multiple listenings.
Contemporary Album of the Month The Guardian
The most striking thing about Jon Hassell’s first new album in nine years,
is how effortlessly contemporary it sounds. That unhurried, muted trumpet is
still pre-eminent, reasserting Hassell as electric Miles Davis’s most
imaginative heir. Much here could be mistaken for new work by a producer like
Flying Lotus or Oneohtrix Point Never, no mean feat for an 81 year old.
4/5 Mojo
Magnificent comeback from the Fourth World pioneer
9/10 Uncut