The trumpeter and composer’s 1977 solo debut, reissued on remastered vinyl, retains its uncanny narcotic power and elemental beauty decades on.
When Jon Hassell coined the term ”Fourth World” to describe his work, he fabricated a musical universe that new artists still call home. Melding the work of minimalists like La Monte Young and Terry Riley with non-Western folk, avant-garde classical and electronic, and early-’70s electric Miles Davis, the trumpeter and composer arrived more or less fully formed in 1977 with his solo debut Vernal Equinox. Originally released on Lovely Music, the label most famous for putting out the music of experimental composer-performer Robert Ashley, Vernal Equinox condensed everything Hassell had to offer the avant-garde of the late ‘70s in a petri dish. Despite his future decades of evolution, there is an uncanny narcotic power and elemental beauty to that first record, which is now being reissued on remastered vinyl and CD by Hassell’s Ndeya records imprint.
Before releasing his album, Hassell studied for three years with the Indian vocalist Pandit Pran Nath. With his queasy and heavily manipulated trumpet figures, Hassell hoped to evoke the microtonal quality of Nath’s singing, but from the beginning, Hassell was careful to set his music apart from any discrete tradition. The record’s traditional folk instruments come from South Africa, South America, the Middle East, and elsewhere. The tambourine-like kanjira is the sole Indian instrument, turned to granular static by electronic processing (“Hex”). On opener “Toucan Ocean,” Brazilian percussionist Naná Vasconcelos introduces the primary rhythmic element on the album—the conga—in its first moments, keeping time with a lengthy, repeated rhythmic pattern and a simple shaker. Hassell’s ensemble introduces electric piano chords, grainy samples of ocean waves, and other effects to gradually build intensity.
”Toucan Ocean” is the only song on the album to which you can reasonably nod your head. Hassell’s music often feels propulsive, but its rhythmic architecture is deceptively fluid and unstable. On most tracks, flurries of percussion—sometimes acoustic, sometimes blurs of digital noise—cluster together into little pockets of free time and chaos. Instead of providing the music’s rhythmic backbone, the album’s percussionists create ambient sounds that match the music’s scrambled synth motifs and samples in importance. Texture becomes its own organizational principle; a slew of disparate elements combine to form one gently vibrating mass.
Hassell’s trumpet is at the center of everything, as bent out of recognition as everything else. His elaborate effects chains create speech-like sounds, and his tone often becomes overwhelmed by the sound of his breath. On heavily processed tracks like “Hex” and “Viva Shona,” ping-ponging electronic dots and dashes nearly crowd him out of the mix. However, both “Blues Nile” and the album’s main event—the 21-minute long title track—distill Hassell’s artistry to its most fundamental elements: percussion, drone, and trumpet. He embellishes one or two notes insistently, creating tiny, detuned flutters that evoke a call to prayer for a non-existent religion. The simplicity and intimacy of these compositions is unusual in Hassell’s catalog.
Hassell would dig into the more pop-friendly implications of his world-music-like experiments on his Earthquake Island album of the following year. His ensuing collaborations with Brian Eno (who contributes liner notes to this reissue), Peter Gabriel, and David Sylvian in the ‘80s would demonstrate how well Hassell’s style slotted in with other mini-movements in the electronic and art-rock music world. His discography of the ’90s and ’00s would evince restraint and control. But no other entry in Hassell’s catalog has Vernal Equinox’s sense of excitement and discovery, palpable with the introduction of each brilliant new sound.
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