Jon Hassell: Music Is Invisible
Ndeya

The late trumpeter Jon Hassell will always be tied to Brian Eno for their landmark Fourth World Vol. 1 - Possible Musics release, which, alongside other enduring albums by Laraaji (Ambient 3: Day of Radiance) and Harold Budd (Ambient 2: The Plateaux of Mirror), was produced by Eno and released in 1980 on Editions EG. But anyone who's followed Hassell's artistic trajectory since knows that what he did after is no less interesting and deserving of attention. Rather than stick to the template associated with that early release, he adventurously evolved beyond it, constantly testing out new directions and charting fresh paths. Listen to it and Music Is Invisible side by side to see how different the releases are, even if the final one of the latter's four tracks echoes aspects of the early set.

Music Is Invisible holds the distinction of being a document of Hassell's final live concert (he passed on 26 June 2021), which featured the trumpeter performing with Rick Cox and John von Seggern in London in 2015. It's not, however, an undoctored account of that event as the material has been mixed and edited by former collaborator Jeff Rona into something considerably other than a standard live album (he's credited on the release with “studio mix and co-production”). Formally speaking the third and final chapter in Hassell's Pentimento series (after 2018's Listening To Pictures and 2020's Seeing Through Sound), Music Is Invisible makes good on the series concept when the word “pentimento” stands for "the appearance in a painting of earlier images, forms, or strokes that have been changed and painted over.” In this case, the application of the idea has to do with both Rona's re-shaping of the live material and with Hassell's own tendency to use previous recordings, be they from concerts or rehearsals, as raw material for subsequent productions. A case in point, elements of the live set were drawn upon for the creation of Listening To Pictures and Seeing Through Sound.

Fittingly, Music Is Invisible inhabits an elusive interzone pitched midway between a live and studio set. While the former is the foundation, the extensive work done at the post-production stage makes its as much an in-studio recording as a live one. Of course, the album has been issued after his death, which might lead some to question its legitimacy as a Hassell release when he wasn't alive to confer a final blessing upon it. Yet no more than a single listen is needed to determine that the material very much captures his spirit and sensibility and honours his memory with dignity. The musicians who performed with Hassell at the 2015 concert, Cox and von Seggern, were also consulted during the development of the album.

In the final presentation of the material, Hassell's credited with trumpet and keyboards, Cox guitar, synth, and electronics, and von Seggern bass, drums, and electronics. Included with the release are notes by Rona relating to the production process and an in-depth piece by Hassell from 2013 titled “On the Invisibility of Music.” A number of text passages stand out, including one that finds him defining “deep listening” as “a surrender to an interior soundscape that is beyond words, one that is kaleidoscopic and prismatic,” words that aptly apply to his own music, including Music Is Invisible.

The four long-form soundscapes at times differ noticeably in character. After “Blue Ba-Ya” opens with a hazy stream of piano chords and dubby textures, Hassell's signature horn emerges, his blurry flourishes insistently bleating against a swirling undertow of percolating bass pulses and electronic convulsions. While “Club Gris-Gris” perpetuates the vaporous dub ambiance of the opener, this time with a lurching pulse providing cryptic animation to the horn-and-electronics miasma, the breezier “Broadway Boogie-Woogie,” its title taken from Piet Mondrian's 1943 abstract painting, undergirds its horn elements with a jittery dub-funk groove that clatters robustly for a lean five minutes. Whether intentional or not, the blustery, careening “Electric Forest” evokes the percussive dimension of Fourth World Vol. 1 - Possible Musics, the earlier album's inclusion of ghatam imbuing it with a distinctive Indian character and the sound re-surfacing on this later sixteen-minute excursion.

October 2026