Customer Reviews

Fourth World, Vol. 1: Possible Musics

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Over a background of sonic loops by Eno and gently pulsating percussives, the wailing, harmonized flugelhorn of Jon Hassel brings to mind some kind of animal transforming into a human. The effect produced by this semi-ambient collection of instrumentals may seem strange and alien to western ears at first, but upon repeated listenings becomes sensually soothing, and works both in a capacity of background or meditation music to get lost in. Hassel's unique style emphasizes both the importance of notes and breath sounds, and truly gives his instrument a life of its own.

Fourth World Vol 1 (where are the others???) treads a line between jazz, ambent and eastern devotional music, finding its own niche in the course of listening. Of special note is the final track, "Charm (over Burundi Cloud)", clocking in at 21:29 and could have been longer if not for the limitations of vinyl production at the time of the original's release. One wonders if the original sessions of Possible Musics could be made available ...... my only criticism of this package being that it seems like more of a sampler, a teasing taste, of all that it could be.

* solo *

I don't think I've listened any one album more than I have Possible Musics. I couldn't live without it. It's dreamy, earthy, soothing, evocative, shamanistic and very organic. It's power is extra-musical. You can listen to it deeply with headphones, or just catch a hint of it from another room and it's somehow just as rewarding. It really perfumes the air like no other music I've heard before, which to me, kind of makes it THE ultimate ambient album. Jon Hassel brings his stunningly gorgeous trumpet playing and his notions of Fourth-World, a kind of ethereal pan-exoticism that encompases everything from raga to "Caravan," together with Eno's meterological synth textures for a perfect collaboration. The two masters mind-meld to form suggestive sonic landscapes that turn your imagination all the way on. 100% non-superficial music that strokes the very soul.

Back in 1980, when this album was first released, few people could figure out how important it would have been. Brian Eno was already a star and Jon Hassell was quite known in the avant-garde scene. This is the result of their meeting: a stunning, hypnotic, forty minutes musical trip which takes the listener to fly over Africa savana and forests,melting together tribal percussion and computer treated trumpet. A must for every ambient/world fan and for anyone who loves Eno, world music and Talking Heads.

This thing is just brilliant, really. It should be noted that this release dates from around the same period as Eno's collaboration with David Byrne, "My Life in the Bush of Ghosts", and it shares a lot of the Africanisms and Arabicisms found on that release, but pulls in a much stronger amount of Eno's ambient sensibilities in the process of execution. The result is a hard-to-describe album, sounding much like a soundtrack for some film montage of out-of-focus African filmshots that jump back and forth from Zaire to Morocco to Mali to Tanzania with a Stan Brakhage-like illogic. The masterpiece here is "Charm (over 'Burundi Cloud')", which ranks with Eno's second collaboration with Robert Fripp, "Evening Star", in terms of its beauty and power, yet simplicity. Important both as ambient and as 'world music', as this does a better job of evoking some other locales than so much of that hackneyed 'world' product that's out these days.

Charm Over Burundi Cloud is 25 minutes of inspired trumpet solo over a haunting one-riff melody. This whole album is the pinnacle of all the Eno/Hassell/Byrne/Tibbets stuff that came out in the 80's. Hassell is GOD! This is HEAVEN!

The best of the Jon Hassell I've heard, and among the best Eno as well - this disc hasn't dated one bit; if anything it was way, way ahead of it's time.

Sparse (as is typical) ambient instrumentation, which in earlier incarnations of ambient music was less techno-oriented, and more drawn from world, jazz and experimental/classical sources; here the prophet synth, Hassell's flugelhorn, Eno's loops and textures and the layered rhythms (somewhat processed and submerged into the mix) are the attractions.

About the only comparison I could make, aside from their own work, would be certain bits of early 1970s Miles Davis, where some similar electronic processing of trumpets (over multi-layered percussion) was happening.

In any case, this is a very unique and extraordinary disc.

-David Alston

I bought this as an LP just on a lark back in the middle '80s, I knew nothing about the musicians at the time -- but one listen to that LP blew me away, I had never heard anything like that before, it was truly the first of its kind in terms of ambient sound and musical sophistication and imagination. Hassell and Eno became two big discoveries for me thanks to this "Possible Musics" album (I was drawn by the title, that's what made me pick it up).

Dream music, trance music, music that paints third world soundscapes ... clouds over mud as the artist calls the sound.

It stands to me as a pillar of modern music along with Brian Eno's "Discreet Music". Both pursue trance and minimalism by way of extended motifs that have a foot in indiginous ethnic musics and a foot in "psychedelia". Both stand as high points in the relative artist's catalogue and both are timeless.

There is so much to say about this lp and the brilliance it exudes that 10000 words, no less 1000, can do it justice.

This collaboration between Eno and Jon Hassell (sadly one of the more overlooked musicians of the Fluxus and avant garde movements of the 60's) wreaks of all things great. The mixture of Hassell's concept of "Fourth World Music" and his familiar trumpet playing with Eno's continues fascination with ethnomusicology (as Hassell also had) makes the lp the complete work it is. Whether with African percussion, Arabesque styles of music, ambient and minimalist musics, electronically prepared music, or moments of silence, Eno and Hassell paint canvases that go beyond even the most vivid of imaginations, to unchartered worlds of possibility.

This is a great, lost album. I recommend it heartily to Brian Eno fans. It's definitely ambient, but more intricate and interesting than Music for Films/Airports. If you don't know Jon Hassell, he plays the trumpet solo on the Talking Heads song "Houses in Motion". This music is filled with those same wavery Middle Eastern styled melodies, along with classic Eno textures, and some tight bass and percussion. S'cool.