Jon Hassell – Vernal Equinox

Ndeya

I first became aware of Jon Hassell’s music in the early 1980s because of his collaboration with Brian Eno on the Fourth World Volume 1: Possible Musics album. Then of course a little later he worked with David Sylvian on his rather wonderful Brilliant Trees album of 1983. He was one of the few EG label artists at the time that truly straddled the divide between jazz and ambient music, conjuring up strange exotic landscapes within his musical output.

Vernal Equinox was originally released in 1977, but by the time I was trying to hunt down copies of it to listen to, after it was hailed by Eno as a must-hear ambient record, pressings of it were already hard to find. So it is wonderful to have this album available again on vinyl after forty-two years of being out of print. The 180 gramme pressing is wonderful, with a sharp clarity that catches all the bottom end of the original recordings and gives them a warm analogue sound. Add to this some sleeve notes by both Hassell and Eno, and we have a re-release that has had a lot of care taken over it.

Side one opens with “Toucan Ocean”, a moody, slight drifting piece that is strong on rhythm. Fender Rhodes piano adds the bed of chords over the rolling waves of an ocean, and Hassell’s trumpet is barely recognisable as one as it is heavily filtered through a Buchla synthesizer made famous by Suzanne Ciani. The power of Hassell’s playing conjures up an alternative world that sits somewhere between imagination and reality. Jungle sounds introduce “Viva Shona”, with Hassell’s heavily treated echoed trumpet crying over the top of marimbas, making it sound as if you are pushing your way through deep undergrowth with exotic creatures crying from the trees overhead. It’s a heady brew and you can almost feel the tropical heat emanating from the speakers as the track progresses.

“Hex” features both Hassell’s filtered trumpet and also his piano put through an ARP synthesizer, which gives them both a very strange effect indeed; again, the track appears to have field recordings running underneath, while Nicholas Kilbourn’s talking drum adds pulses of percussion that gives more of an Indian feel, especially within Hassell’s trumpet scales and tones. Again we feel like we are pushing through lush vegetation only to discover some ancient temple overgrown with trees. “Blue Nile” is played over a deep drone from the Serge synthesizer, Hassell’s trumpet calling out from a mist of echo at dawn as if it’s being played from some tall tower, its sound feeling the airwaves of a small town. To my ears, this reminds me of my travels around north Africa and conjures up that same feeling I got from being there. The trumpet layers over itself, and becomes this wonderful all-embracing sound that feels both recognisable and as if it’s been created on another world.

Side two opens with the title track, a piece that takes up pretty much the whole side of the vinyl. Hassell’s trumpet scatters around over David Rosenboom’s tablas and Nana Vasconcelos’s congas. The tonality here is very much on Indian music again, with the piece feeling like a type of extended evening raga as drones swell underneath. The instruments leave enough space for the atmospherics to come through, adding an odd sense of calm to the proceedings. Slowly, the beat becomes steadier and Hassell’s playing starts to match it as his trumpet, laced in reverb, takes you on a journey. As the piece moves along, you feel yourself totally caught up in the atmosphere it creates and you settle into an odd sense of calm as the music transports you away.

This is truly the start of Hassell looking at the world in a different way and conjuring up cross-pollinations of its differing musical strands, and gives you that sense of elsewhere. Ending the album, “Caracas Night September 11, 1975” is a short piece that feels humid like a sultry night, and apparently this is a field recording of Hassell playing alone on top of a hill and the ambience that surrounded that moment.

This is a long overdue release of this incredible album that sounds wonderful on this great pressing. The music is a hybrid of jazz, ambient, world music and a little bit of Karlheinz Stockhausen, whom Hassell studied under at a similar time to Holger Czukay of Can. There is a wonderful warm heat that emanates from the grooves of Vernal Equinox and understandably it is regarded as one of the fifty best ambient albums of all time. Give it a spin and let your soul go on a journey to strange lands.

-Gary Parsons-