Trumpeter, composer, and Fourth World musical theorist Jon Hassell is readying his first album in nine years, Listening To Pictures (Pentimento Volume 1), which is due out June 8th via the artists new label Ndeya. This past April we previewed the upcoming album’s first single “Dreaming,” and today we take a listen to it’s newest offering, “Pastorale Vassant.” The track takes its conceptual cues from the record’s title with Hassell explaining that upon listening and thinking about the composition he was reminded of Paul Klee’s 1922 painting, “Twittering Machine” (Which you can view after the Soundcloud embed below). The musician says,
“…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).”
“Pastorale Vassant” also recontextualizes a field recording that Hassell made while staying at the painter Mati Klarwein‘s house on the island of Mallorca. There, a flock of goats wandered the hillsides at night with each one wearing “a slightly different neck bell.” Fascinated by this “constantly-changing “gamelan”,” the musician spent a “balmy Summer midnight” recording the sounds which can be heard entering this track at about midpoint. While “Dreaming” featured drumless ambiance and floating horn tones, “Pastorale Vassant” is imbued with a skittering rhythm that gives it an almost IDM feel. Meanwhile, ghostly chords and key strikes punctuate the atmosphere in a seemingly random and chaotic order–later joined by those softly ringing bells echoing in the night air.
Look for Jon Hassell to make his first NYC appearance since 2009 with a talk titled Riffs on Hyperopia and Music at Issue Project Room on Saturday, June 2nd at 8 pm. Tickets are available here.
