Glitterbeat

The first ever reissue and remastering of Jon Hassell & Farafina’s prescient, “Fourth World” masterwork. Propulsive Burkinese rhythms meet revelatory, ambient soundscapes. Co-produced with the legendary studio team of Brian Eno & Daniel Lanois. “[Hassell’s] command of microtonal shadings enabled him to blend into the West Africans' distinctive sonic colorations, which would not have been possible for a player whose intonation conformed strictly to Western music's equal temperament.” – Robert Palmer, New York Times Composer and trumpeter Jon Hassell has been an elusive, iconic musical figure for more than half a century. He’s best known as the pioneer and propagandist of “Fourth World” music, mixing technology with the tradition and spirituality of non-western cultures to create what he termed the “coffee-colored classical music of the future.” In 1987 he joined with Farafina, the acclaimed percussion, voice, and dance troupe from Burkina Faso, to record Flash of the Spirit. While the album is a natural extension of those “Fourth World” ideas, and a new strand of Possible Musics, it also a distinctive outlier in the careers of both artists; an unrepeated merging of sounds whose influence still reverberates today. Hassell arrived as the outsider, having to slide in and around Farafina, an established group that started in 1978 where the leader, as he told Music Technology, was “somewhat inflexible in terms of new things. They were suspicious at first…about what could happen and why this whole thing was going on.” But once settled in the studio, the musicians sparked off each other. The eight members of the band - who had also collaborated with the Rolling Stones and Ryuichi Sakamoto - brought their long apprenticed, virtuosic drumming and melodic textures (balafon, flute, voices) to the sessions. They built up layers and patterns of rhythm, while producers Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois (fresh off the phenomenal success of U2’s Joshua Tree) created a sonic atmosphere in which they could creatively intertwine with Hassell’s digitally processed trumpet and keyboards. Just the physical feel of the drums in the room was enough to inspire Hassell. “There’s something about the volume of air that drums pump, there is a wonder quality about it that’s impossible to find any place else,” he recalled. “Even if you sampled all that and tried to duplicate it, I don’t think it would have the same feel.” The experiment took root. Despite their initial skepticism, the musicians from Farafina ended up relishing their interaction with the studio team and the trumpeter/conceptualist Hassell. Souleymane “Mani” Sanou, Farafina’s band leader from the early 90’s on, remarked: “traditional instruments, they can meet with electronic and modern music; so collaborations are so important to us…yes, with Jon Hassell, the experience was amazing.” The music that emerged was rich and groundbreaking, a move to transcend the boundaries between jazz, avant-garde classical, ambient and the deep rhythmic tradition embodied by Farafina. But of course, Hassell had been slowly blurring and ignoring such boundaries for years. He’d served an apprenticeship with Stockhausen, worked with minimalists Terry Riley and LaMonte Young, studied Indian music under Pandit Pran Nath, and collaborated with artists like Talking Heads, Peter Gabriel and David Sylvian, as well as forging a path into ambient music, through an especially fruitful partnership with Brian Eno on the albums Fourth World, Vol.1: Possible Musics and Dream Theory in Malaya. Hassell’s ideas of melody and rhythm had moved beyond the confines of Western music, out into borderless, imagined spaces, and in Farafina he found the ideal companions in exploration. It’s an album of subtle, telling details, where the layers and textures build and change to highlight each other. On “Out Pours,” for instance, the groove simmers softly, led by shifting patterns on the balafon, while Hassell’s heavily treated trumpet creates breathy swirls of sound that play and dance around them. Percussion leads on “A Vampire Dances,” pushing and probing and seeming to force electronic shrieks as a response from Hassell’s trumpet, while the keyboard creates a bed of sound that refuses to hold still. “(Like) Warriors Everywhere” takes that idea even further. Over Farafina’s surging rhythms, Hassell’s electric piano and trumpet dig deep into abstract, melodic ideas hinted at by the Bitches Brew-era Miles Davis band. What’s apparent is how carefully the musicians listen to each other and the ways in which they respond; the spaces become as important as the notes. Every piece of music is alive. It breathes, it changes and grows. Farafina create the rhythms and counter-rhythms that spring and move, making room for Hassell’s explorations. They affect him, and in turn what he plays alters what they do. It’s symbiotic; each inspires the other. The trumpet techniques that Hassell developed to play the microtones of Indian music – electronic and acoustic – let him easily slide through the music. He becomes part of the whole, his trumpet another voice in the band, rather than an imposed, outside Western instrument – achieving one of the aims of the “Fourth World” credo, to create a new, natural trans-cultural harmony. And nowhere is that harmony more apparent than on the epic final track, “Masque,” where percussion and treated trumpet draw the listener along on a journey through shifting landscapes that transform into unexpected colors with every turn. It becomes a series of discoveries that startle and delight and sometimes confound. On its release 32 years ago, Flash of the Spirit was a revelation, a record that had no clear parallel for its encompassing sound. Even today, now that the musical world has caught up with much of Jon Hassell’s vision, it still feels especially vibrant. The album remains a testament to both the influence Hassell has quietly exerted on contemporary music, and the forward-looking traditionalism of Farafina, one of West Africa’s great rhythmic ensembles. As walls and barriers are erected around the globe, it is hard not to think of the music found on Flash of the Spirit as ever more relevant. An echo from the past. Still transmitting future possibilities.

180-gram vinyl. Gatefold sleeve. Includes CD. 2015 remastered reissue. Includes lengthy interview with Laraaji. Laraaji's glistening 1980 debut Ambient 3: Day of Radiance has from the beginning been considered an outlier. Though widely celebrated at that the time of its original release (as the third installment in Brian Eno's emerging ambient music series), the album also brought with it an aura of mystification. Where did it fit in? An uncharted synthesis of resonating zither textures, interlocking hammered rhythms, and 3-D sound treatments (courtesy of Eno), Day of Radiance seemed to push open many doors at once, ambient music being only one of them. Though there are certainly aspects of the album that find sonic common ground with other Eno-related "ambient" projects (on the tracks "Meditation #1" and "Meditation #2" in particular), the album is not easily boxed into a singular genre. Day of Radiance also mines the ethereal spiritualism of late-'70s new age music (of which Laraaji is considered a pioneer), the harmonic and rhythmic repetitions of American minimalists Terry Riley and Steve Reich, and traditional global sounds from India and Java (particularly gamelan music). And while Laraaji never explicitly embraced the "Fourth World" theories of fellow visionary and Eno collaborator Jon Hassell, Day of Radiance echoes a kindred exploratory exoticism. In the late '70s Brian Eno had relocated to New York City from London and had begun a period of fertile intersections with musicians in his adopted home. Laraaji recounts how he and Eno first crossed paths: "I was playing [zither] in Washington Square Park and I usually play with my eyes closed because I get into meditative trance states that way, and opening my eyes and collecting my little financial reward from that evening, there was a note, on notebook paper -- it looked like it had been ripped from somebody's expensive notebook -- there was a note that says 'Dear sir, kindly excuse this impromptu piece of message, I was wondering if you would be interested in talking about participating in a recording project I am doing, signed: Brian Eno.'" The album was completed in two sessions; the first one produced the faster, pulsing "Dance" compositions (on the A-side) and the second session yielded something closer to Eno's own ambient constructs -- slow zither washes and waves with more pronounced sound enhancements (on the B-side). While the album is deceptively simple in its construction, closer listening reveals its extraordinary depth of field and its polymath influences.

YĪN YĪN, the highly touted Dutch quartet from Maastricht, returns with a sonically expansive third album Mount Matsu. Recorded collectively in their own studio in the Belgian countryside, the album is a kaleidoscope of sounds and influences, occupying a no man’s land between Khruangbin and Kraftwerk, surf music and Southeast Asian psychedelia, Stax soul and mutant 80s disco, City pop and Japanese instrumental folk (sōkyoku). Mount Matsu sees YĪN YĪN at their most mature and adventurous stage yet. Infectious pentatonic melodicism calling for multiple rewinds.

“Yīn Yīn hop and bound along, being whisked up by the pure joy of their experimentation, unafraid to see how far from home it takes them...eccentric, boundary-bashing, genre-melding groove.” – The Line of Best Fit YĪN YĪN’s dazzling second album dives even deeper into dancefloor propulsion and space travel atmospherics than their lauded debut The Rabbit that Hunts Tigers (2019). While there is an expanded sonic richness on the new album as samples, drum computers and otherworldly synthesizers intertwine with the band’s taut playing, more than anything The Age of Aquarius is a simple, direct appeal to dance. The record’s groove manifesto can be put down to YĪN YĪN’s experiences on the road, where the positive energies picked up from their audiences fed back into a sound that increasingly “kept people moving.” Funk and disco beats. Electro experimentation. Global retro vibes. A shimmering, cinematic sweep. --------------------------------------------- YĪN YĪN’s new long player, The Age of Aquarius, is a simple, direct appeal to dance. It is also a record blessed with a considerable hinterland; with cosmic time, long studio hours and a determination to transcend the daily ennui of living in the Dutch city of Maastricht all playing their part. YĪN YĪN see themselves as a bunch of musical dreamers. The track ‘Declined by Universe’ references the fact that “we’re all kinds of drop outs.” The beautiful, old and somewhat staid city of Maastricht, where the band is based, isn’t really conducive to setting up a bustling music scene: and it’s a place where the outsiders quickly recognize each other. YĪN YĪN are all “nightlife people”, which meant their friendship initially came about through co-organizing and deejaying DIY parties. Before the band formed, none had carved out a conventional career, or done the “very Dutch thing” of completing their studies. Things started to move for real when Yves Lennertz and Kees Berkers decided to make a cassette tape that drew on references to Southern and South East Asian music. Once the idea was formed, Lennertz and Berkers wasted no time in taking “a lot” of instruments to a rented rehearsal room in a small village near Maastricht. There the pair set up a couple of mics and recorded a number of songs in three days flat. Yves: “When we put it [the recorded session] out on tape, the reactions were very positive. So we decided to do a live show in Maastricht. We asked our musical friends to help us out, and from that night on we became a full band: with Remy Scheren on bass, Robbert Verwijlen on keys and Jerome Cardynaals and Gino Bombrini on percussion.” This “united against the world” stance is also heard at the end of ‘Declined by Universe’, where the band claps their own music, making the track initially sound like a live track. It’s a funny, maybe surreptitious statement of belief in what they do. YĪN YĪN also wanted to create an illusion of strength in other ways: ‘Declined by Universe’ sounds as if there is a large group of people playing, not just the core band. This was done by passing over sampling in favour of live recording multiple layers of percussion. Yves: “In the end we were getting kind of silly and started applauding every take. We decided to keep that reaction in. I still visualize a sort of school building in Thailand where people are playing this when I hear the recording.” Maybe YĪN YĪN also see their position of a band hiding in plain sight in their own land reflected in the legend of Chong Wang. Kees: “Chong Wang is a historical mystical figure. Very little is known about him and some people even deny his existence. But we wrote a ballad for him on the first album and now dedicated another track for him.” Regardless of attitude, the new record is bags of fun. Mainly because YĪN YĪN make dreamers music, in the sense that everything can happen, sometimes all at once. The working title was YĪN YĪN In Space, one that referenced the band’s inner vision of an entity that travels through space, encountering different planets, aliens, parties and galaxies along the way. Despite the name change, the music is still the soundtrack for that vision. And the intergalactic party vibes are strong. Nods to brilliant, invigorating dance music abound, some of the thumping beats in numbers like ‘Chong Wang’ the title track and ‘Nautilus’ drop some thumping 1990s-style electric boogie and italo disco chops along the way. Then there is ‘Shēnzhou V.’, which plots a stately course between eastern-inflected pop music, Italo and Harmonia-style electronic meditations. The record’s party vibe can also be put down to YĪN YĪN’s experiences on the road, where the positive energies picked up from their audiences fed back into a sound that increasingly “kept people moving”. The expansive richness in sound and feel may also be down to the fact that more samples, drum computers and synthesizers are used on The Age of Aquarius than in their previous records, a process that intertwines with real-time playing in the studio. ‘Faiyadansu’, for example, started with a sample found on an old traditional Japanese koto record. Kees: “I first programmed a beat with 808 drums. Yves recorded guitars over that. Then we found some great vocal samples from a lady on YouTube who teaches the Thai language. These phrases and words all have something to do with enjoying food. The last step was to record some extra percussion on top.” Cosmic appropriations of time also crop up in the titles, which may give the lie to some of the band members’ preoccupations with the state of the world. The Age of Aquarius is seen as a time when humanity takes control of the Earth and its own destiny as its rightful heritage, with the destiny of humanity being the revelation of truth and the expansion of consciousness. An old trope musically the Age is most famously referenced in the hippie musical, Hair. For YĪN YĪN it seems to denote the time when this record first took shape during the previous January, when the Age was meant to finally dawn. Other direct references to cosmic times are in the track names ‘Kali Yuga’ and ‘Satya Yuga’: the Kali Yuga, in Hinduism, is the fourth and worst of the four yugas (world ages) in a Yuga Cycle, preceded by Dvapara Yuga and followed by the next cycle's Krita (Satya) Yuga. It is believed to be the present age, which is full of conflict and sin. Who said this was just a party record?