Audiopile Review: Want your life to feel all exotic and dreamlike? Throwing on something by fourth world music inventor Jon Hassell is always a good way to get there. But the mere fact that track one from 1987’s ‘Surgeon of the Nightsky…’ is called ‘Ravinia / Vancouver’ makes us feel like we’re living in a futuristic rainforest utopia rather than, y’know, Vancouver. That’s how transportive Hassell’s music is. Truly, the man was a legend, and his legend has never seemed more timely or apposite. You wanna talk about ‘ambient jazz’? Hassell’s processed trumpet is as OG as it gets in the ambient jazz game. Go listen to ‘Possible Musics’, his classic Eno collaboration from 1980. And let’s not forget that his very best (in our humble-but-correct opinion) album was 1986’s ‘Power Spot’ on the legendary ECM label. ‘Surgeon of the Nightsky…’ came a year after that, and Hassell was clearly still on an incredible run of form. It’s a collection of live recordings mixed by Eno himself. And, yes, one of them was made right here in Vancouver.

“2024 re-release. The renowned and widely acclaimed music label Intuition, well known since the 1980s, is proud to announce the release of its most important and successful back-catalogue titles on vinyl under the name ‘Intuition Master Series’. The American trumpeter and multi-instrumentalist Jon Hassell (March 22, 1937-June 26, 2021) was an international legend despite never having managed a popular breakthrough. Hassell was a musical visionary and pioneer, one who was inspired by ambient sounds and new music. He appreciated the music of avant-gardists such as Stockhausen, in whose Cologne school he also studied. He came into contact with Terry Riley and his minimalistic music early on and played on his first albums. Hassell was also a musically driven person, someone who had to get to the bottom of styles. Thus, he was intensively involved with Far Eastern, but especially Indian music. Using the ingredients he learned, he created a completely new way of playing on and with the trumpet. He created language-like modulated air currents flowing through the instrument to produce seemingly alien, microtonal sounds. He combined this technique with ethnic polyrhythms, electronic alienation, soundscapes and jazz to create his own style, which he called ‘Fourth World’. With this kind of music, he significantly influenced numerous emerging styles such as world music, nujazz or ambient. It is no mistake to say that without Hassell’s ideas, these types of music would have taken a very different course. Hassell’s influence on the music world cannot be overestimated, even if he himself was always unimpressed by the praise. ‘It’s the invisible things that buzz around us. You just have to bring them to light and make them visible.’ In a tried and tested association with Brian Eno (as producer), his first completely live-recorded album was released at that time. The individual pieces, which were recorded in Paris, Vancouver, Hamburg and Brussels, reflect the special atmosphere that made every (rare) Jon Hassell concert something extraordinary. Intuition’s 1987 The Surgeon of the Nightsky Restores Dead Things by the Power of Sound is undoubtedly one of his best works.”