Listening to pictures : Pentimento, volume one

"The Fourth World concept has caught the imagination of musicians for years, though its simmering influence has recently come to a boil. A 2017 Optimo Music compilation dedicated to Fourth World music is perhaps the clearest acknowledgement of Hassell's impact. He's a hero for experimental artists like Max D, RAMZi, Visible Cloaks and many more. This might bring some comfort to Hassell, now 81, who harbored resentment towards Brian Eno as the two artists' paths diverged after their 1980 collaboration Fourth World Vol. 1: Possible Musics. While Eno was (and remains) a household name, Hassell stayed a fringe figure. Listening To Pictures (Pentimento Volume One) is Hassell's first album since 2009's Last Night The Moon Came Dropping Its Clothes In The Street. Coming on Hassell's own label, the new, Warp Records-backed Ndeya, it's a more electronic record than its predecessor, which was recorded with a live band and released on the jazz label ECM".

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"At the same time as appearing radically modern (...), this stealthily accomplished trumpeter has rarely sounded so jazzy. Opener "Dream" is a kind of phased blues shuffle, while "Manga Scene" finds Hassell soloing tenderly, in the vein of Chet Baker, while software appears to be serenely malfunctioning all around him. In 2007, Eno wrote of how Hassell's experiment was to "imagine a globalised world constantly integrating and hybridising, where differences were celebrated and dignified - and to try to realise it in music." In 2018 that project, with all its elegance, humanity and political urgency, seems more relevant than ever".