25 years after his highly influential “Power Spot” album, Jon Hassell returns to ECM with his collective Maarifa Street and some spacious Fourth World dub-montage music, his uniquely vocal trumpet sailing forth into mysterious soundscapes. Jon Hassell describes “Last night the moon” as “a continuous piece, almost symphonic, with a cinematic construction” and drifting “clouds made out of many motifs”. Core material is drawn from a session at Studios La Buissonne near Avignon in April 2008, with detail added in Los Angeles in November and December. Live recordings from Courtrais, Belgium and London, as well as a remix of a piece originally created for a Wim Wenders movie, are also integrated into the atmospheric, filmic flow, along with short samples snared throughout 2008.
Last night the moon came dropping its clothes in the street
Jon Hassell
- 1Aurora
05:22 - 2Time And Place
03:48 - 3Abu Gil
13:04 - 4Last Night The Moon Came
11:15 - 5Clairvoyance
01:05 - 6Courtrais
05:44 - 7Scintilla
00:50 - 8Northline
06:43 - 9Blue Period
07:42 - 10Light On Water
08:16
Hassell, a fascinating horn stylist who uses electronic treatments to alter his trumpet tones, achieves an otherworldly sound that falls somewhere between Miles Davis and a humpback whale. … He is most revered as a pioneering avatar of contemporary sound works, comparable to (if not as well known as) Brian Eno. Last Night the Moon still finds him exploring ways of allowing space to dominate his music. Instrumental touches – swaths of electric piano, squiggles of violin – appear like individual brushstrokes, and the whole work functions like an abstract canvas, compelling because of its unpredictability.
Steve Futterman, The New Yorker
Hassell’s lush, inescapable tone – part embouchure, part electronics – combines spare, thoughtful melodies with an unadorned and pure sensuality. The soundscape he creates is equal parts musical conception and improvisational acumen–in this case, with the participation of a large group of players…
There are plenty of artists moving music forward in various ways; few, however, have created as complete a sound world, as integrated a musical conception so instantly recognizable–regardless of its participants–as Hassell.
John Kelman, All about Jazz
“Noone can harm you, feel your own pain”, sang Lennon dereinst in “I’ve Found Out” auf dem Plastic-Ono-Band-Album – die Musik Hassells scheint etwas ganz Ähnliches zu sagen, wenn auch auf eine weitaus weniger kämpferische, sondern vielmehr spirituell-seelenführerisch vergeistigte Art: Lass dich vom Mondlicht anmachen und hab keine Angst in die Himmelsschüssel zu fallen! …
Der zugleich transparent-himmlische sowie archaisch-brummende Klang dieser Aufnahme [ist] sehr zu loben, in der aus einem Flageolett-Tröpfchen durchaus auch schnell mal eine ganze Milchstraße werden kann. Kurzum: Die Sterne stehen günstig, um Jon Hassell zu empfangen, ihm die Zeit zu schenken, die er verdient, und im Lichte seiner Klangskulpturen im Buch des Lebens zu lesen.
Alessandro Topa, Jazzthetik
It’s an album that slips under the radar of conventional listening: not jazz, though it’s largely improvised; easy to absorb, yet not at all dumbed down. You can lose yourself in the leisurely (but never static) title track: it’s the acceptable face of ambience. … In performance, the music seemed inward, reserved, almost soporific. On record, subtly mixed, the tracks recorded there sound quite magic.
John L. Walters, The Guardian
Picture that immersed state of sleep in which your breathing becomes deep, slow, and steady – this is the world where Hassell’s music dwells, like a phantom wandering the urban landscape at 3am. He exhales through his trumpet long, sonorous notes that drift like a creeping fog before dissipating into thin air, while the muted percussive pulse and instrumental textures keep everything moving forward. It’s post-Miles Davis metacool with a modern industrial edge.
Jon Iverson, Stereophile
Hassell’s treated trumpet has a veiled cry like the sound of a muezzin across a sleepy city, weaving among quietly keening violin, otherworldly loops and a subliminal-groove rhythm section. With serpentine snatches of melody rising up and into synthetic mists, the album haunts the senses like a 21st-century version Miles Davis’ “In a Silent Way.”
Bradley Bambarger, The Star-Ledger
Hypnotisch, poetisch, intensiv – ein faszinierender Mikrokosmos aus vibrierenden Patterns und schwebenden Sounds, den der Stockhausen-Schüler mit einer Handvoll Gleichgesinnter wie dem Live-Sampling-Ass Jan Bang und Gitarristen wie Rick Cox und Eivind Aarset zur Eroberung freigibt. Ein dichtes Geflecht von Bezugslinien mit dem Nachhall halbvergessener Erinnerungen, das der Trompeter mit unverwechselbarem Ton inszeniert. Ein stilles Meisterwerk!
Sven Thielmann, Stereoplay
Alles scheint im Fluss, im Wachsen, ständig verändert sich der Klang, neue Konturen, Schattenwürfe, Muster entstehen. Und vergehen. … Jon Hassell ist ein Maschinist des Ungewissen und Uneindeutigen. In seiner Musik verbindet, konfrontiert, überlagert er verschiedene Ebenen von Ideen und Einflüssen, präpariert einzelne Bausteine aus ihrem Zusammenhang und stellt sie in einen neuen, in dem schließlich nur noch zählt, wie sie dazu beitragen, die verschiedenen Stimmungen dieser Musik trennscharf hervorzubringen.
Stefan Hentz, Die Zeit
Last Night the Moon is a series of musical motifs and transitions that emerge, change shape and mutate in an album length reverie that seems to pass by in a series of deep musical sighs. Its quiet intensity and focus is hypnotic, beckoning you into the heart of the music, with its constantly mutating musical flavours and densities. In a world of instant gratification, Hassell’s music yields its secrets slowly and is all the more rewarding for it.
Stuart Nicholson, Jazzwise
Jazz, improvisation, contemporain, métissage, world ou électronique? Jon Hassell se situe au-delà des clivages par son art du collage et de la transformation – sa signature. Mélange contemplatif de spiritualité et de sensualité, ce nouvel album est l’un des plus essentiels de sa rich discographie.
Franck Mallet, Classica
25 years after his last ECM recording, the highly-influential “Power Spot” (recorded in 1983/84), Jon Hassell returns to the label with a new album - issued to coincide with the trumpeter’s first US tour in two decades.
“Last night the moon came dropping its clothes in the street” takes its title from a line from a 13th century poem by Jalaluddin Rumi:
“Last night the moon came dropping its clothes in the street.
I took it as a sign to start singing.
Falling up into the bowl of sky.”
The striking, almost surreally-vivid image (in Coleman Barks’ contemporary translation) seems to speak to Hassell’s aural re-imaginings. His own ‘singing’ opens up new angles of vision, as his very vocal trumpet lines are reframed in works that contrast, combine, or melt together aspects of ancient and hypermodern idioms in a musical meta-language which can embrace sounds from all the compass points, sounds of the city, sounds of the natural world. In the past Hassell’s termed his personal genre Fourth World: by any name inspirational, its implications have registered with pop and rap and jazz artists as well as classical chamber musicians and filmmakers… And purely as an instrumentalist, Hassell’s influence has been widely felt, too. Nils Petter Molvaer , Arve Henriksen and Paolo Fresu are but three ECM-associated trumpeters who acknowledge a debt to the liquid tone and weightless, floating quality of Jon Hassell’s trumpet improvisations, and to his pioneering use of electronics in tandem with his horn.
Hassell describes the music of “Last night the moon” as “a continuous piece, almost symphonic, with a cinematic construction” and drifting “clouds made out of many motifs” . Core material is drawn from a session at Studios La Buisonne near Avignon in April 2008, with detail added in Los Angeles in November and December. Live recordings from Courtrais, Belgium and London, as well as a remix of a piece originally created for a Wim Wenders movie, are also integrated into the atmospheric, filmic flow, along with short samples snared throughout 2008.
Jon Hassell: “The word ‘montage’ pops out of my memory bank...Not only does it describe the little montages that serve as transitions between longer pieces (themselves montages of motifs that keep reappearing in new contexts) but the music presented here is a montage of the last years of concerts and the changing cast of the group I call Maarifa Street – all musicians who have contributed their personalities – the way an actor does to a film – to this living, morphing process that occasionally gets set down as a ‘record’.”
“Last night the moon came dropping its clothes in the street” takes its title from a line from a 13th century poem by Jalaluddin Rumi:
“Last night the moon came dropping its clothes in the street.
I took it as a sign to start singing.
Falling up into the bowl of sky.”
The striking, almost surreally-vivid image (in Coleman Barks’ contemporary translation) seems to speak to Hassell’s aural re-imaginings. His own ‘singing’ opens up new angles of vision, as his very vocal trumpet lines are reframed in works that contrast, combine, or melt together aspects of ancient and hypermodern idioms in a musical meta-language which can embrace sounds from all the compass points, sounds of the city, sounds of the natural world. In the past Hassell’s termed his personal genre Fourth World: by any name inspirational, its implications have registered with pop and rap and jazz artists as well as classical chamber musicians and filmmakers… And purely as an instrumentalist, Hassell’s influence has been widely felt, too. Nils Petter Molvaer , Arve Henriksen and Paolo Fresu are but three ECM-associated trumpeters who acknowledge a debt to the liquid tone and weightless, floating quality of Jon Hassell’s trumpet improvisations, and to his pioneering use of electronics in tandem with his horn.
Hassell describes the music of “Last night the moon” as “a continuous piece, almost symphonic, with a cinematic construction” and drifting “clouds made out of many motifs” . Core material is drawn from a session at Studios La Buisonne near Avignon in April 2008, with detail added in Los Angeles in November and December. Live recordings from Courtrais, Belgium and London, as well as a remix of a piece originally created for a Wim Wenders movie, are also integrated into the atmospheric, filmic flow, along with short samples snared throughout 2008.
Jon Hassell: “The word ‘montage’ pops out of my memory bank...Not only does it describe the little montages that serve as transitions between longer pieces (themselves montages of motifs that keep reappearing in new contexts) but the music presented here is a montage of the last years of concerts and the changing cast of the group I call Maarifa Street – all musicians who have contributed their personalities – the way an actor does to a film – to this living, morphing process that occasionally gets set down as a ‘record’.”
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