FOURTH WORLD VOL.1: POSSIBLE MUSICS (WITH BRIAN ENO)

This album was my introduction to Jon Hassell's weirdly cool music. Back in the late seventies and early eighties, Tufts University's radio station, WMFO, had the greatest weekly prog show ever, Mental Notes. It was on this show, that I used to tape, and play over and over again, that Mental Mike played this entire album one night. I was hooked. On this album, Hassell has pared down the rhythm into eerie loops of sounds, much of them derived from his treated trumpet playing. And with the help of Brian Eno, his signature sound was born. Harmonized trumpet, sounding like a distant wailing train, plays over mesmerizing pseudo-tribal rhythms, to come up with a sound like nothing else.

The best track is Charm (Over "Burundi Cloud"), a twenty-one minute epic, where Hassell's trumpet often sounds like a human voice, wailing over the rhythms.

This has to be heard to be understood.