Brian Eno is MORE DARK THAN SHARK

INTERVIEWS, REVIEWS & RELATED ARTICLES

Uncut APRIL 2023 - by Ana Gavrilovska

JON HASSELL: THE LIVING CITY / PSYCHOGEOGRAPHY

Live set and outtakes collection from fourth world explorer

Trumpeter-composer Jon Hassell, who died at the age of eighty-four in 2021, cut a mesmerising dash through the avant-garde and electronic landscape of the second half of the twentieth century, performing with everyone from terry Riley to Talking Heads. Also available together on a double-CD called Further Fictions, The Living City is a 1989 live set that accompanied a Brian Eno audio-visual installation while Psychogeography is a reimagining of Hassell's 1990 album, City: Works Of Fiction. The former captures the scintillating performance of the Jon Hassell Group inside a ten-storey glass-vaulted pavilion in NYC, Eno mixing the band live with the sounds of his installation. The latter consists of alternate takes and demos Hassell compiled in 2014, evocative tracks like Waterfront District and Emerald City conjuring physical environments through sonic collage. The music of the band in the studio is patchworked with samples, field recordings, electronic manipulation, and the otherworldly sounds Hassell is able to wrench out of his trumpet. The results are fascinating, ranging from jazz fusion to pure dubbed-out weirdness.