Jon Hassell - Last Night The Moon Came Dropping Its Clothes In The Street (2009) [Official Digital Download]

American trumpet player and composer returns to ECM with a stand-out album. Jon is known for his influence in contemporary music and his unusual electronic manipulation of the trumpet sound which has been lauded and imitated by many. He has collaborated with the likes of Brian Eno (who produced his first ECM record, the iconic Power Spot, Peter Gabriel (Scorsese Soundtrack Passion: Music for The Last Temptation of Christ), he co-composed the electronic theme music for the television show The Practice, and still makes guest appearances on many albums (e.g. 2008 Ani DiFranco). The music and Jon's background provided sizeable opportunities to market the record to a wide audience encompassing lovers of electronic, jazz, and world music.

The strangely beautiful title of Jon Hassell's Last Night the Moon Came Dropping Its Clothes in the Street on ECM is taken from a poem by the great 13th century Sufi mystic Jalaluddin Rumi. The rest of it, in the context of the sound here, is also instructional: "Last night the moon came dropping its clothes in the street/I took it as a sign to start singing/Falling up into the bowl of sky." Hassell's electronically enhanced trumpet playing follows directly in a line from Miles Davis' experiments of the 1970s. It comes off more as "singing" than anything else. He sounds like no one else, but many trumpet players and sound collagists have been deeply influenced by his work. The "bowl of sky" in the poem is referent, too: it reflects the quality of Hassell's musical montages and sonic investigations. This has been true since the very beginning in the 1970s, but became his trademark "sound" while working with Brian Eno as he developed his "Fourth World" music – showcased on his EG albums from the early '80s (Fourth World, Vol. 1: Possible Musics, Fourth World, Vol. 2: Dream Theory in Malaya, Aka/Darbari/Java ) – and was acutely articulated on his last ECM release, 1985's brilliant Power Spot. Last Night the Moon Came Dropping Its Clothes in the Street is Hassell's first recording since 2005's Maarifa Street: Magic Realism, Vol. 2; it's an assembled montage of sessions recorded in France and Los Angeles, and concerts are also woven into the rich fabric here. Hassell's music, even now, sounds alien, beguiling, mercurial, seemingly formless and airy but full of subtle washes, shifts of tone, and polyrhythmic strategies. The ten cuts here are mostly middle-length pieces that range between five and eight minutes, but three – "Time and Place," "Clairvoyance," and "Scintilla" – act as transitions segmenting, however seamlessly, the album into roughly thirds.

Tracklist:

01 - Aurora
02 - Time And Place
03 - Abu Gil
04 - Last Night The Moon Came
05 - Clairvoyance
06 - Courtrais
07 - Scintilla
08 - Northline
09 - Blue Period
10 - Light On Water

Produced by Manfred Eicher and Jon Hassell. Co-produced by Peter Freeman.
Mixed by Peter Freeman in Los Angeles, Nov./Dec. 2008. Digital editing: Peter Freeman.
Recording engineers: Gerard de Haro and Nicolas Baillard at Studios La Buissonne, Pernes-les-Fontaines.
"Courtrais" recorded live in Courtrais, Belgium / "Abu Gil","Northline"and "Light On Water" recorded live at Kings Place, London, November 2008 by Arnaud Mercier.



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