I listened to the first side of this album in the morning and it sounded fantastic. I listened to the second side late at night on headphones, and I didn't enjoy it nearly as much. Always hard to tell whether it's your state of mind, your biorhythms or the listening conditions that makes things like that happen. It's usually not the quality of the music itself. Many times I've been enthralled by a piece of music and then gone back to it later but been unable to hear the same magic. The converse also happens (something sounds superficial at first; then profound later), but is more easily explained away through poor attention.
What I enjoyed in the first side was the same quality I admired in Roedelius's music almost a year ago: that not-going-anywhere. Also a real depth in the sound, particularly the tracks with the tropical soundscape in the background. No surprise that Eno tracked Hassell down (or vice-versa) shortly after this album came out.
Nana Vasconçelos's percussion is an almost constant presence, a bit like the tabla and dumbek on A Meeting by the River (which I see I also compared to Roedelius), and an important part of the album. I just discovered, in Hassell's own account of the album that Vasconçelos's contributions were overdubbed, which makes them even more impressive because they sound like the bed on which the other instruments were laid. I saw Vasconçelos once, playing with Jan Garbarek at the Octagon in early 1987.
This was Jon Hassell's first album, released when he was 40.
 MusicBrainz entry for this albumBrian Eno on Vernal Equinox and Jon Hassell [added 14 November 2007] |
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