It’s been a busy 2018 for Jack Hertz already, and we’re only 3 months in! In February, the Bay-area musician and label organizer released a Krautrock inspired album as m00m, his project with the German synthesist Christian Fiesel, as well as releasing PBK and John Wiggins‘ LP Where Pathways Meet (Complete Sessions 1998-2001) via his Acousmatique Recordings label earlier that month. Now, Hertz returns with his solo LP The Last Songs of a Dying Tribe–out on his other label, Aural Films.
The release kicks off the label’s focus on Fourth World Music, a term coined by the experimental trumpeter and composer Jon Hassell. Having studied in Germany with Karlheinz Stockhausen, as well as in India with the master singer Pandit Pran Nath, Hassell explored the possibility of music in global terms. Often combining his effects processed trumpet (filtered thru his training with Nath), as well as instruments suggestive of various world music traditions, and occasional field recordings, Hassell sought a hybridized music that was “…beyond First World, beyond Third World, beyond classical, beyond pop.”
Drawing out further Fourth World implications with his project, Hertz has dedicated his new album to, “the last tribes, past and present…who’s cultures have been lost to the ignorance of progress.” With Western technologies and corporate interests threatening the existence of indigenous peoples around the globe, Hertz reminds us that ancient tribes once “led humanity out of the forest.” Implicit here is the notion that the “Forest,” and the cultures that inhabit them, still offer humanity an organic and life-affirming knowledgebase. More than a mere atavistic urge to return to Nature, though, Hertz combines this understanding with electronic elements and various sonic strategies to create an imaginary Fourth World free of borders.
While The Last Songs of a Dying Tribe might be seen as a requiem of a sort, it also opens up worlds of imaginative possibility. Today we listen to the album’s closing track, literally, “The Last Song of a Dying Tribe.” Opening with a sound of percussion and the hot wind blowing thru tall grass, we might almost imagine ourselves seated on the ground of some high savannah to witness a shamanic ritual. But somewhere along the way, this tribe must have stumbled upon a local psych band’s abandoned musical equipment–and a generator or two. The result is an interdimensional sense of drift complete with eerie, spine-tingling washes of sound that ultimately seem to have a salubrious effect on both ears and spirit.
