Jon Hassell - Last Night The Moon Came Dropping Its Clothes In The Street

Label: ECM Records

Released: 2009

Style: Jazz, Ambient

"...Last Night the Moon Came Dropping Its Clothes in the Street is Hassell's first recording since 2005's Maarifa Street: Magic Realism, Vol. 2; it's an assembled montage of sessions recorded in France and Los Angeles, and concerts are also woven into the rich fabric here. Hassell's music, even now, sounds alien, beguiling, mercurial, seemingly formless and airy but full of subtle washes, shifts of tone, and polyrhythmic strategies. The ten cuts here are mostly middle-length pieces that range between five and eight minutes, but three -- "Time and Place," "Clairvoyance," and "Scintilla" -- act as transitions segmenting, however seamlessly, the album into roughly thirds.

The band contains a pair of holdovers from his last outing in bassist Peter Freeman -- who doubles on laptop -- and guitarist Rick Cox, who has been augmented by no less than Eivind Aarset on the instrument. The other new players include Jamie Muhoberacon keyboard and laptop, drummers Helge Norbakken and Pete Lockett, Kheir Eddine M'Kachiche on violin, and Jan Bang on live sampling. Together they root and extend the aerial sound of Hassell's trumpet that flows everywhere and anywhere. Check the simple bass and guitar rhythmic attack on "Abu Gil," the album's longest track, where In a Silent Way's "It's About That Time" meets the desert blues feels of "Anouar Brahem" and the Master Musicians of Jajouka meet the noir-ish ambient funk of early Shriekback. The title track, by contrast, is a long, loping, beautiful number where moods of morning, marketplaces, and nocturnal sunsets all loosely entwine around the listener. The obvious postmodern jazz soloist's approach hovers all around the shapes and colors evoked by keyboards and trumpet in "Courtrais," as soundscape, loops, and ambiences all deepen and widen before being grounded by a subtle but unflinching backbone-slipping bassline by Freeman. Hassell moves toward everything -- samples, drifting sonics, hints of melody, and, for such quiet and subtle music, an impressive harmonic palette -- to create a montage that evokes the timelessness of the past with a firm grasp on the unknowable, perhaps even unspeakable, future. His jazzman's sense of time and phrasing is enhanced by his painterly sense of space and shade. This album is further proof that Jon Hassell inhabits a terrain of his own, and reflects the true vibration of poetry as it meets the human ear as something akin to pure sound." - Allmusic

Tracklisting:

1 Aurora (5:22)

2 Time And Place (3:48)

3 Abu Gil (13:04)

4 Last Night The Moon Came (11:15)

5 Clairvoyance (1:05)

6 Courtrais (5:44)

7 Scintilla (0:50)

8 Northline (6:43)

9 Blue Period (7:58)

10 Light On Water (7:59)

Link

Svalastog - Woodwork

Label: Rune Grammofon

Released: 2006

Style: Abstract, Experimental, Ambient

"True story, as told by Per Henrik Svalastog himself: “I found an old Norwegian zither laying around my grandfather´s barn in the mountains. It appeared that he had been a fiddler before he lost all his fingers at the sawmill and convertet to become a hardcore pietist setting down a prohibition against music, dancing, card-playing and television. That made me want to convert as well, from digital medias to real playing. From electronica to folk music. Back to the sources. Heritage and environment.” So it goes that Per Henrik is playing and improvising on archaic folk instruments like the ram's horn and harpeleik, which is a Norwegian zither. He is then processing it all in the computer, resulting in a detailed and accomplished but soothing and quite hypnotic music. Taking the music out of the city and into the Norwegian woods, and not the arctic regions, as is the popular image if you come from Tromsø and is associated with electronic music. Per Henrik Svalastog is also a member of Information who released the excellent “Biomekano” (RCD2024) on Rune Grammofon in 2002. The previous year he did a stunning SPUNK remix for their “Filtered Through Friends” collection (RCD2022), a track that is also available on the “Until Human Voices Wake Us And We Drown” vinyl box set." - Label

Tracklisting:

1 The Wood Metal Friction (5:13)

2 Snow Tracer (6:24)

3 Reconnecting Joints (4:52)

4 Mouse Tracking (5:58)

5 Centerline Reminder (4:18)

6 Reforestation (4:27)

7 Cow Goat Goat (3:17)

8 Slow Blowing Wireless (3:59)

9 White Oak White Pine (3:47)

10 Rework And Out (3:10)

Link