Now in his ninth decade, trumpeter, composer, and sonic conceptualist
Jon Hassell remains a restless musical explorer. While he hasn't released an album under his own name since 2009's
Last Night the Moon Came Dropping Its Clothes in the Street on ECM, he's been working to further the Fourth World concept articulated fully on 1980's
Fourth World, Vol. 1: Possible Musics and 1981's
Dream Theory in Malaya.
Hassell utilized the aesthetics of American minimalism and married them to strands of electric modal jazz, the various global musics he studied, and electronics. He not only employed these on his own records, but in collaborations with everyone from
kd lang and
808 State to
Ry Cooder,
Björk,
David Sylvian, and even
Tears for Fears.