John Fenton
A genius of modern music and a true innovator. He was always deserving of more attention than he got. New and beautiful worlds were unlocked by this dream catcher.
Single 140g vinyl LP in a full colour printed sleeve with printed inner. Includes download card.
Includes unlimited streaming of Seeing Through Sound (Pentimento Volume Two)
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
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Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album
Digipak with 4 page booklet
Includes unlimited streaming of Seeing Through Sound (Pentimento Volume Two)
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
ships out within 5 days
Purchasable with gift card
£10GBPor more
Streaming + Download
Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
“Listen as if you were being told a secret” - Federico Fellini
A companion piece to 2018’s Listening To Pictures, this second volume in the pentimento series presents eight new tracks by the music visionary, continuing his lifelong exploration of the possibilities of recombination and musical gene-splicing. Pentimento is defined as the “reappearance in a painting of earlier images, forms, or strokes that have been changed and painted over” and this is evident in the innovative production style that ‘paints with sound’ using overlapping nuances to create an undefinable and intoxicating new palette.
In classic Hassell fashion, the title can be interpreted in a myriad of ways, but perhaps the most pertinent at the moment is the human instinct to sing and play through a rain of difficulties. A future blues of indeterminate and ever-shifting shape. The album is buffered by two 8-minute plus epics at the beginning and the end - the hypnotic “Fearless” with it’s metronomic, almost Can-like rhythm, and blurry, noir-ish texture of sound emerging like car headlights from the fog; mirrored at the end of the record by the beautiful sci-fi lullaby of “Timeless”, a track with a gaseous, billowing quality as electronic clicks and bubbles float over a landscape of shimmering, glacially paced complexity. The bridge between those two worlds is no less compelling, from the frantic, spidery IDM sketch of “Reykjavik” to the collapsed-time ballad of “Unknown Wish”. Whilst containing seeds of classic ‘fourth world’ fusion, this record finds the artist still questing to create new forms and mutations of music, a thrilling window into what music could sound like in a world to come.
credits
released July 24, 2020
SCENE 1 (8:04)
FEARLESS
Jon Hassell - trumpet, electronics
Rick Cox - electric guitar, bass clarinet, sample orchestration
Eivind Aarset - electric guitar, sampler
John Von Seggern - electric bass, synth, keyboard samples
Kheir-Eddine M’Kachiche - violin, sampler
Arnaud Mercier - recording engineer, Paris Radio Studio
and Minoroten Kirche, Vienna, Austria
SCENE 2 (4.23)
MOONS OF TITAN
Jon Hassell - trumpet, electronics
Michel Redolfi - electronic textures
Christoph Harbonnier (Lightwave)
Christian Wittman (Lightwave)
Arnaud Mercier - recording engineer
Recording Studio, Radio France, Paris
SCENE 3 (2:53)
UNKNOWN WISH
Jon Hassell - trumpet, keyboard
Peter Freeman - electric bass
Rick Cox - guitar
John Von Seggern - sampler, percussion
SCENE 4 (4:02)
DELICADO
Jon Hassell - trumpet, keyboard
Rick Cox - guitar, percusion, samples
Hugh Marsh - violin orchestrations
John Von Seggern - sampler, percussion
SCENE 5 (2:16)
REYKJAVIK
Jon Hassell - keyboard
Rick Cox - guitar with electronics
Jan Bang - live sampling
Peter Freeman - bass
SCENE 6 (1:41)
COOL DOWN CODA
Jon Hassell - keyboard
John Von Seggern - keyboard, electronics
Rick Cox - guitar, electronics
SCENE 7 (6:38)
LUNAR
Jon Hassell - trumpet, chordal harmonics
Rick Cox - guitar, choral electronic background spatialization.
Sam Minae - rhythmized bass samples, percussion.
Background textures inspired by
Christopher O’Riley’s performance of
Guirlandes (Garlands) Prelude for Piano by Alexandere Scriabin
SCENE 8 (8:11)
TIMELESS
Jon Hassell - keyboard, electronics
Hugh Marsh - electric violin and orchestration
John Von Seggern bass, keyboard, percussion samples
Adam Rudolph - African drums and orchestration
Produced by Jon Hassell
Co-produced by Rick Cox
Executive Producer - Matthew Jones
Recording Engineer, Production Consultant - Arnaud Mercier
Co-production, Moons of Titan - Michel Redolfi
Recorded at Studio Venice, California
Art direction: Dan Kuehn, Arien Valizadeh, Taska Cleveland
Album art sources, moon-and-stars motif courtesy the Mati Klarwein family
Mastering - Al Carlson, New York
Additional mastering - Arnaud Mercier
All compositions - Jon Hassell / Nyen Music via Warp Publishing
A previous version of “Timeless” appeared
on the Dreamy Harbor compilation on Tresor.
Jon Hassell pioneered a musical ethos he dubbed 'Fourth World', a mixture of traditional Indian Vocal style - which Hassell
adapted for the trumpet - and advanced electronic techniques, a style which manifested itself in his seminal first album 'Vernal Equinox'. His career since then has seen many influential solo works as well as collaborations with Talking Heads, Peter Gabriel, amongst others....more
supported by 95 fans who also own “Seeing Through Sound (Pentimento Volume Two)”
I was brought here after listening to a live performance of Makaya's on you tube. I instantly loved the song Holy Lands so much that I had to see if the album version was the same rendition as the live one. Then I listened to the whole album! Universal Beings is a just a groove... It's a mix of traditional and something new, very nice. pandr1900