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Jon Hassell’s First Posthumous Album to Arrive This Fall
Jon Hassell’s label, Ndeya, will release his first posthumous album of new music, Music Is Invisible (Pentimento Volume Three), on 2 October. The release completes a trilogy begun with 2018’s Listening to Pictures and 2020’s Seeing Through Sound, offering a final document of the influential composer’s late-career work.
The four-track album comes from Hassell’s last live performance, recorded with Rick Cox and John von Seggern at St John at Hackney Church in London on 23 May 2015. Jeff Rona edited and mixed the recording beyond a conventional live-album approach; its semi-improvised material revisits ideas from the preceding Pentimento albums. Hassell, who died aged 84 in 2021, was known for creating the “Fourth World” aesthetic, blending global musical styles with electronic techniques.
In short
- Jon Hassell’s final live performance becomes a posthumous album.
- Music Is Invisible arrives on 2 October.
- The record completes his Pentimento trilogy.
Explained simply
Jon Hassell was an American composer and trumpet player whose music combined electronic sounds with influences from musical traditions around the world. He called this approach “Fourth World”, imagining music that crossed boundaries between styles and places.
Hassell’s late work explored how recorded sound can be reshaped and heard in new ways. The album belongs to a trilogy that began with Listening to Pictures and continued with Seeing Through Sound, and draws on a performance with musicians Rick Cox and John von Seggern.
The recording was later edited and mixed by composer Jeff Rona. It offers a way to hear Hassell’s ideas in performance and to understand how he developed them across his final trilogy.
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