What's New?: 1.21.2014

On today's episode: PROG?

Daniel Lanois — Belladonna (2005)

I remember this came out when I was working at Tower, so I got to hear it a time or two in the store and always dug it. It's not quite ambient, but completely instrumental save for a few wordless vocals. It has a great kind of southwestern spaghetti vibe to it on songs like 'Agave' and 'Carla.' Elsewhere, it takes on a kind of airy, ever descending ambient like on the first and last tracks 'Two Worlds' and 'Todos Santos.' In the middle, you get kind of ambient pop dub things like 'Frozen' that just defy categorization. Through it all is Daniel's slide guitar and pedal steel, like a tour guide through all these worlds of sound. Definitely a nice revisit.

Midsummer — Catch and Blur (1999)

Midsummer, I'd reckon, is probably in the top ten or so best American bands of the last fifteen years. Too bad nobody cared. I first heard of them on the split album they did with Coastal.  And, at first, I had no idea what to make of their dreamy prog sound.  But the more I listened to it, the more I got it (like many things discussed here).  Seemingly wordless vocals and layers of dreamy, meticulous arpeggios often give way to exuberant, cymbal heavy explosions of pure sound.  A lot of their songs are six minute, multi-movement epics —especially on this, their first release. Have a listen to 'Where the Waves' for an example of just how good they were.  For a first release, absolutely stunning.

Midsummer — Moon Shadow (2001)

At this point, I should point out that everything Midsummer did was really artsy and "pure" sounding, so even though I've basically described them as a shoegaze band, they were most certainly not.  This EP, for instance, is just one long song, broken up into four movements.  There's tons of loud parts, odd time signature switching and even accompaniment from a string section.  It's a very complete piece of work and ventures close to prog ideals in more cases than a few.  Ambitious as hell and pretty to boot, I'd say it would be hard to improve on such quality, but we're talking Midsummer here, so spoiler: I'd be wrong.

Midsummer — Inside the Trees (2007)

When the band finally released a full length, it was just an over the top release of pure creativity, filtered through a net of dreamy melodies and seemingly endless good ideas.  Songs drop through holes, change direction entirely and break themselves down only to be built magically and triumphantly back up.  The big revelation here is that now the band was now able to do all that in under four minutes.  There's still those longform epics and they're still just as potent, but hearing it all blasted so perfectly in such a short burst is truly impressive.  It's only now that I had to seek out these albums from drummer Steve Elkins that I realized how neglected this band was (even by me; better late than never).  Inside the Trees should have been a landmark album in American rock music, but alas, it was not meant to be.  However, this album is on Spotify along with the rest of their catalogue, thankfully.  Just unbelievably good.

David Sylvian + Robert Fripp — Damage (1993)

Recorded live on the tour for the First Day, these performances have a sense of space and crunchiness that the studio album either cluttered up or muted — not that it's a bad record; these performances are just that good.  Indeed, the way 'Brightness Falls' morphs into the Rain Tree Crow tune 'Every Colour You Are' is just chill-inducing and probably the highlight here.  But, truly, there is no way anyone that even remotely liked the studio album won't absolutely love these live recordings.  And you'll find a lot more to assess and you'll see new things in these arrangements of the tunes, as well.  Definitely worth it, if for nothing else than the Gone to Earth songs.

David Sylvian — Alchemy: An Index of Possibilities (mid 1980's)

This compilation has the essential Jon Hassell collaboration Words With the Shaman EP right up front, but I already had that on the Brilliant Trees CD reissue so it was not new to me.  Still very awesome, though.  The rest of the CD is filled out by ambient works featuring a cast of Sylvian's usual collaborators and it's uniformly excellent.  The solo Sylvian pieces 'Preparations for a Journey' and 'The Stigma of Childhood' are the highlights of the new-to-me material, but really, the whole thing is just brilliant.  Stands up very well as its own album of Sylvian's ambient side.

David Sylvian — Approaching Silence (early 1990's)

More ambient Sylvian stuff.  There's a sense of moody calm to Sylvian's ambient music that's unlike anything else I've encountered, so when 'The Beekeeper's Apprentice' begins with three minutes of wind chimes and pedal steel, you know it's gonna be good.  There's just three tracks here, two of those over thirty minutes in length and the short 'Epiphany' to separate them.  The title track is a nearly fourty minute trip that seems to take you on a journey into another solar system.  Easily the highlight of this disc, and possibly of Sylvian's ambient work.

Jon Hassell + Bluescreen — Dressing for Pleasure (1994)

Basically Hassell doing hip hop beats, if you can believe that. I guess, at the time, the kids would have called it acid jazz. But that sounds so un-hip at this point. I'm not sure what to call it. Just like everything Hassell has done. This is a helluva lot more catchy than most Hassell, I will concede that much. Have a listen to the leadoff track 'G Spot' for an idea of what's up here.  It's very beat heavy and, honestly, seems like Hassell's idea of a pop record.  Only the closing tune 'Blue Night' turns in a longer running length and sounds remotely like any previous Jon Hassell tunes.  This is an interesting album in Hassell's catalogue and I find it kind of funny that his poppiest record is probably my least favorite.

Jon Hassell — Maarifa Street (2005)

This album is now almost a decade old and it's still Hassell's second most recent release. It's cobbled together from live recordings and studio attempts to recreate those live performances. It's a much more uptempo, bass-heavy affair than I'm used to for newer Hassell albums. Have a listen to 'Divine S.O.S.' and dig it.  There's a lot of polyrhythms going on here and, because of the prominence of the bass, it's probably one of Hassell's funkiest albums when it's all said and done.  He has a hard time running out of ideas with his solos here and this, more than any of his other records of the past twenty years, sounds the most like he was the true successor to Miles Davis' 70's space funk.  Outstanding.

~Austin

What's New?: 7.8.2013

Some very brilliant stuff here. . .

Neil Young — Trans (1982)

Yes, Neil's infamous "new wave" album. Once an embarrassment, I can now hear it as a musician pushing forward and challenging himself just for the sake of not staying still creatively. Although, beginning with the standard Neil Young fare of 'Little Thing Called Love' does feel a bit misleading. The next four tracks find Neil aping Kraftwerk as much as anyone else did in the early 80's and masking his voice with a vocoder. And, at the time, it sure would have surprised me had I been there that, actually, the best tracks are the ones where Neil doesn't try to just tread water. 'Transformer Man' received a new lease when Neil tackled an acoustic version for his Unplugged album about a decade later.  'Computer Age' is the other really good synth-pop tune here that has rightly been reassessed in a more positive light.  The synth redux of 'Mr. Soul' is pretty bad, but, like I said, at least he was trying something else.  The album ends with one of Neil's most idiosyncratic masterpieces.  'Like an Inca' is absolutely mammoth in scope and executed pretty damn well, to boot.  If it were billed to Neil and Crazy Horse and were on any other album besides this one, with eight minutes and one of the most rewarding chord changes in Neil's entire repertoire, it would have a much bigger reputation than it ended up with.  To give an idea of how important the song is: Neil revived it for his own audio autobiography just a couple years ago.  Yeah, that one makes it all worthwhile.  Easily.

William Tyler — Behold the Spirit (2010)

An incredible record from an incredible musician.  This one is just sheer mood.  Like, the whole thing just feels like a symphony.  Yeah, it's got separate parts and everything, but it's really just one big piece to behold.  William Tyler is a very inspiring guitarist who has longstanding roots in two long running Americana bands and who has finally come to the spotlight in recent years.  Comparisons to John Fahey, Will Ackerman and Leo Kottke are imminent, as Will does not sing at all.  There's twang, sure.  There's a big impressionistic emotional aspect to the music as well.  But, I dunno, there's a different quality to what he's doing here.  Instead, he just plays these glorious one man walls of fingerpicked sound; sometimes on an electric, a bit more delay and echo than your average folkie.  Just wonderfully warm and heartfelt tunes.  Then, he'll just go straight wacky psychedelic like on 'To The Finland Station.'  Just something unique and sparkling about this guy.  He released an album before this one in 2008 under the name the Paper Hats and it's really good too — but sorry, kiddos, it was a German-only release.  It's on Amazon MP3 for cheap and Spotify (for free, of course).

William Tyler — Impossible Truth (2013)

One from earlier this year that I missed until now. Easily my pick for so far album of the year. Still sparse and mostly just Will, but he is joined by some backing musicians this time around. Just have a listen to the first track.  An incredibly tuneful rollercoaster that rivals even the best work of his influences, its scope is only matched by its emotion.  The whole album just feels like the most beautiful manifesto: the output of someone whose full potential has been fulfilled for the first time, and yet, who also seems to be just now entering a creative renaissance.  Dreamy, seemingly bottomless near drones like 'Cadillac Desert' would have been album highlights in the past, but are now things that play like an easy intermission.  Album closer 'The World Set Free' is gorgeous.  And with slow burning development, it takes many side trips into any number of musical caves and crevices of influence.  But, perhaps most importantly (to me anyway), in the final third of the tune, with the addition of a drum set, woodwinds, a string quartet and some straight up distorted guitar dissonance, it's as close to David Axelrod's scope as contemporary music has been for at least a few years.  Whoo boy, what a find.

Brian Eno — Music for Films (1978)

A varied and emotional album of small pieces.  Seriously, this thing is a single record, but there's eighteen tracks in total!  Some of the tracks with a full band backing actually remind me of early Cocteau Twins, if you can imagine that.  There's a really "spacey" vibe to this music and I don't just mean the silence between the notes.  When I hear something like 'Alternative 3' or 'From the Same Hill' I get images of nebulae and elliptical galaxies in mind.  Sigur Rós has obviously learned a lot from the 'Sparrowfall' series that closes out side one of the album.  But Brian had obviously learned a lot from his time in Germany a couple years previous.  Things go in cycles, after all.  Very emotive stuff, in any case.  And the relatively accessible melodies combined with the shorter length of the pieces makes this one arguably Eno's finest work that I've yet encountered.

Nic Jones — Penguin Eggs (1980)

Truly a wonderful, but bittersweet work from a musician that seemed to be on the cusp of something even better.  This has one of the single greatest side one/track one's of all time with Nic's absolutely ace arrangement and performance of 'Canadee-I-O.'  A stunner on any level of evaluation, it's probably the definitive version of the tune.  The rest of the album is all traditional tunes as well, and the focus remains Nic's seemingly supernatural guitar playing.  A tune like 'Courting is a Pleasure' just appears to be a pleasant song of a broken heart on the surface, but Nic's accompanying himself on guitar makes the song a lot fuller than it initially may appear to be.  There's some tunes with accordion like 'The Drowned Lovers' and 'Barrack Street' that are so jaunty and bouncing, they sound nearly like sea shanties (in a good way).  The solo instrumental 'Planxty Davis' is generally the sort of gorgeous thing you're in for here, though.  Nic was injured not too long after this album and it left him unable to play for many years.  At least this album got made.

Jimmy Woods Sextet — Conflict (1963)

A rare (and odd) sideman appearance from Andrew Hill drew me to this one.  The alto player that led this session (not to be confused with the similarly named, yet equally as overlooked, bassist) was apparently a well-respected composer among his peers and this was one of only two sessions that he led before deciding that that was enough of that.  Not only does Andrew Hill play on this one, Elvin Jones is at the kit and even tenor demigod Harold Land is present.  I swear, if this one were on one of the east coast labels, instead of the long-ignored west coast-based Contemporary label, it would be considered right there with all the classics on Blue Note and Prestige.  Have a listen to the title track and see for yourself.  The whole record, perhaps because of Andrew Hill's presence (or so I'd assume?), has a similar "in-but-slightly-out" sound.  This version has three bonus tracks that are alternate takes of tunes on the proper album, but hearing this band is an absolute pleasure, regardless of the tunes they're riffing on.  A one hundred percent stone cold classic.  Whoo boy, it's a firecracker of a session.

Jon Hassell — Power Spot (1986)

Truly, it would not seem a just world if Jon Hassell didn't have at least one album released on the ECM label. I'm just surprised it took this long into his career for it to happen.  This album is probably the thing most similar in overall sound to his Fourth World album since that album, six years previous to this one.  It's a very hard thing to review a Jon Hassell album and do it justice, simply because nothing else sounds like the music he creates.  Dreamy washes of sound and percussive ramblings are the order of the day for the base on which Jon builds his towers of blurted out blocks from his heavily treated trumpet.  It's a completely and strangely beautiful album and a defining moment, in both Jon's and ECM's respective catalogues.  Top stuff.

~Austin

What's New?: 11.12.2012

Getting close to catching up. . .

The Kinks — Arthur (1969)

This is the limited run that came out on the Sanctuary label last record store day that not only was pressed on super heavy white vinyl, but is two discs — the first of which is the mono mix of the album and the second is the stereo.  Obviously, the proper album Arthur (or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire) is an irrefutable and enduring classic.  But this mono/stereo gatefold package is absolutely gorgeous and the big draw for me was the mono mix.  Noticeably different than my original US stereo pressing and just downright warmer, if you ask me.  If you don't know this album, here's the first song and the last song from the album.  Many more good ones, and even a few better ones, to be found in between.  Good stuff.

Pink Floyd — Ummagumma (1970)

The Floyd gettin' all sorts of wacky in the early days.  This is a two record set, in which disc one is live past favorites and disc two is all new studio material.  The live stuff is long and jammy, the studio stuff is long and calm, all of it is very psychedelic and trippy.  The live arrangements that the band had worked out really emphasized the quiet and meditative versus loud and chaotic dynamics in the songs.  Have a listen to 'Careful With That Axe, Eugene' to get an idea of how they did it.  The studio half of the album is mostly filled with curiosities, with each band member getting a half side feature.  Not necessarily that great overall, as most of the material is more along the lines of a soundtrack (but without any direction) than actual fleshed out songs.  Roger Water's excellent acoustic number 'Grantchester Meadows' is definitely the highlight of the entire album.  Worthy stuff; and a fine overview of the band's early years.

Van der Graaf Generator — Pawn Hearts (1971)

This album has Robert Fripp all over it, so it's gained a bit of a reputation over the years as somewhat of a hidden proggy gem, if I'm to understand things correctly.  It's a bit faster, more dissonant and not quite as subdued overall than the album that came right before it.  It's just three long songs (one of which takes up all of side two).  There's lots of shifting, weird turns in the songs, so you can never really get too comfortable when it's playing.  The closest to conventional things get is on the otherwise spacey piano ballad 'Man-Erg', but even that has a moment of aggressive sax/Hammond B-3 riffing and Peter Hammill's shrieking vocals.  Check out the big, twenty-three minute epic 'A Plague of Lighthouse Keepers' and expand your head, square.  There are too many passages in that song that are just downright amazing to start listing here.  But it's worth the ride.  Really "big idea" music.  Cool.

Leo Kottke — Chewing Pine (1975)

Leo gettin' in a good groove and milking it for all it's worth.  I've been going through these early and mid-70's Leo albums pretty easily all year long and this one's no different.  It goes down smooth and easy, but gets better with every listen, as you start to notice the care in the playing and small nuances of songcraft.  'Standing on the Outside' continues Leo's tradition of indisputably strong side one/track ones.  Couple more vocal numbers (one a Procol Harum tune, the other Marty Robbins) and the rest of the album is just Leo doing what Leo does.  Some of the numbers pick up where Dreams and all that Stuff left off (like 'Venezuela, there You Go' and 'Monkey Money'), but the rest of the instrumental numbers point straight back to Mudlark and Greenhouse territory.  Lots of slidin', quick pickin' and very tuneful riffs.  I especially like the two ballads ('Rebecca' and 'Trombone') towards the end of the album.  Certainly not the best of Leo's work from this period, but some moments here are just as strong as the best.

Fairport Convention — Babbacombe Lee (1971)

Fairport loses Sandy Denny and Richard Thompson and decides to go all high concept.  It's about a boy, named John "Babbacombe" Lee, who goes off to serve and live with an old lady and leaves as soon as he can to be in the navy.  He's successful and happy until he falls ill and is forced to return working for the elderly woman, loses his mind and brutally kills her.  Not sure why the band chose this guy's story to tell, but the package that this comes in is pretty elaborate: a gatefold cover, a 10"x10" eight page booklet and full lyrics printed on the inner sleeve.  Good fun — and hey, the music's not bad either!  It's definitely more in the "rock" end of folk-rock here, as the guitars are the loudest and most amped up I've yet heard on a Fairport album.  Still, even though there's little here that reminds of the Fairport I previously knew, check out the rather nice harmonies and catchy riffs on 'John Lee' or the gentle acoustic strum and brilliant vocal melody (and presumed Sandy Denny leftover) 'Breakfast in Mayfair' or even the genuinely eerie 'Dream Song.'  Not a total winner, but a nice one to pick up if you like the early albums and aren't opposed to a little more rockin' out than usual.

Tom Rush — The Circle Game (1968)

Tom gets the big orchestrated treatment on a lot of other people's songs (three of which are Joni Mitchell's) and pretty amazing results ensue.  Paul Harris' arrangements kick absolute butt throughout.  Look no further than the absolutely bleak and beautiful charts on the album opening 'Tin Angel' for proof.  There's a couple James Taylor songs here, but, amongst the covers, the Joni songs are the best.  The final two tracks are both originals by Tom and they steal the show, easily.  'Rockport Sunday' is a rare solo acoustic instrumental that is just stunning in its scope and its virtuosity, while 'No Regrets' has become a Tom Rush standard in its own right for a very good reason.  Have heard about this album for years, but I'd consider it a minor classic now that I've actually heard it; if for nothing else than side two.

The Turtles — Turtle Soup (1969)

Produced by none other than Ray Davies himself!  Knowing that, and considering this was their preceding album, I was perhaps expecting too much.  This is certainly not a total wash, but it's just generally a nice pop/rock album.  Nothing embarrassing happens, but there's not a surprise to be found either, so take it for what it is.  The 12-string jangle of 'She Always Leaves Me Laughing' is good 60's pop, while 'Somewhere Friday Night' is the sort of dreamy jangle, mildly folky thing that the Turtles seemed to promise all along (and yeah, it's probably the best thing here).  As a last album by a should be legendary band, it's a bit low key and, some might argue, "safe."  I would call it a dignified and appropriate addendum to Battle of the Bands (which, let's be honest, would have been the best way ever to end a career).

Tom Rush — Take a Little Walk With Me (1966)

The first half of this album is all renditions of old rock and roll favorites.  Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, it's all here.  Al Kooper produces and, as far as the first half of the album is concerned, it appropriately takes on a very similar tone to Bob Dylan's work of the time.  Listenable, sure but nothing that special.  Side two and Tom goes back to straight acoustic numbers and it's just glorious.  Tom's version of 'Turn Your Money Green' is a clinic for someone wanting to take someone else's composition and making it their own.  'Galveston Flood' closes out the album and Tom is just showing off at this point, with his slide playing and soaring overdubbed harmonies.  It's a perfect example of an album that starts off maybe a bit slow and just gets better and better as it plays.

Jon Hassell — Fourth World, Vol. 2: Dream Theory in Malaya (1981)

I buy any Jon Hassell I see, especially in the used bins.  This one snuck up on me, in that regard.  Guitar weirdo and all around thinkin' outside the box guy Michael Brook is pretty much co-billed here, as the album is basically Jon soloing over Michael's sound concoctions.  And the musical backdrops over which Jon solos are very manic and repetitive for the most part.  I'm not exactly sure why this was billed as part two of the series, because where the original was dreamy and cascading in sound, this one is amped up, aggro and quite challenging.  Michael Brook's digital treatments and MIDI-synth arrangements are not exactly as smooth as I have come to expect Jon Hassell's backing band to be.  Have a listen to the opening number to get a glimpse of what I mean.  The title track is ten minutes of what I expected and easily the album's highlight.  Brian Eno is about, playing drums and his influence reigns supreme over the album's closing number.  Overall, probably the most challenging Jon Hassell album I've yet encountered.  And still a really good one.

~Austin

What's New?: 6.16.2011

Bits and pieces, old and new, so on and whatnot. . .



The The — Dusk (1993)

Although very popular as one of the big budget alt-rock bands of the late 80's and early 90's, The The is nearly forgotten these days. Poor Johnny Marr; some of his best post-Smiths was distributed amongst what have now become footnotes that only dorks like me know about (that would be Electronic and the topic of this review, The The). As The The is essentially Matt Johnson's guise for himself and whoever he happens to be recording with at the time, you have to approach every single album under the moniker as an entity unto itself. I've had a rough go of things with the band, honestly. I've bought up (and then traded back in, a few months later) the whole of the group's 80's output two or three times over. And yet, the past time I did that exact same thing, I held onto everything from Burning Blue Soul through Mind Bomb. I put in the work, vigilantly listened through headphones on the bus and several walks around town and I guess I finally got it, because I found the band's four 80's albums taking up nearly permanent residence on my iPod. Dusk though, is another chapter entirely. My best initial description is that it's Mind Bomb meets Burning Blue Soul. That big budget production and decidedly resonating left-field songcraft meets full on artsy tunefulness. As always, Matt Johnson is melodramatic as hell. But, in many ways, this feels like his true masterpiece — the big, overbearing finale that he's been working towards all along. 'Slow Emotion Replay' is pretty much godlike. Arguably Johnny Marr's best recorded harmonica performance accompanied by Johnson's most earnest lyric ever ("Everybody knows what's going wrong with the world, but I don't even know what's going wrong with myself") combine for a magical moment. The overtone here is, as opposed to Johnson's outright anger at religion, a genuine disconnect with social interpretations of what "GOD" is or may be and a complete plunge inwards to explore that very same topic. If it weren't all set to a totally great big budget (arguably dated, but nonetheless appealing) slightly Americana tinged musical backdrop, it may not have the resonance that it does. But when Johnson sings the chorus, "If you can't change the world, change yourself and if you can't change yourself, change your world" on the album's closer 'Lonely Planet' it feels very honest and maybe like he actually believes it. Affecting stuff. Shouldn't have waited so long to check it out. Arguably the band's best album.

Miles Davis — Aura (1985)

A tough turkey, to be completely sure. I love Miles, without question but I have firmly avoided his 80's material after being duped (i.e. Yes, I'm taking shots at Scott fucking Yanow again). However, a friend of a friend (who happens to be a novice Miles scholar in his own right), mentioned to me (at a chance meeting) that Aura is really the only 80's Miles that stands up with his pre-retirement material. And, first things first: it sounds NOTHING like his other 80's albums. That's for damn sure. It's a kind of modern classical/free funk hybrid. And its compositions were by a Danish guy (by the name of Palle Mikkelborg) who based the chords on letters from Miles' full name. And it's the last album that Miles recorded for Columbia (and, subsequently, the last one he had nothing but good to say about; his own words: 'Masterpiece'). The 80's cliches of big, overtly echoey drums, cheesy guitar effects and borderline embarrassing synthesizer sounds are present. But, in his solos, Miles sounds truly inspired. In the middle trilogy of tracks 'Green', 'Blue' and 'Electric Red' he sounds invigorated and inspired, not intimidated, by the overtly "modern" production sounds. I mean, hell, I praise for David Sylvian, Jon Hassell and Talk Talk albums of the same period for essentially the same things that I've subtracted points off of Miles' 80's output for so long. A lot of reviews I've read compare this to Miles' work with Gil Evans and while I definitely don't hear that, I guess I do get it now because, in addition to (awesomely) sounding like an inspiration to David Axelrod's 90's albums, I hear a definite similarity between what Mikkelborg and Miles were doing here and what like-minded rock bands were doing within the context that they knew. Very heady and nearly soundtracky music. I guess, consider it Miles' last truly artistic hurrah. Just be ready to deal with dated production.

Mazzy Star — Among My Swan (1996)

Oh, Mazzy Star. How I heart you so. This band. And this album! This fucking album right here! Have accompanied me through a lot in the last few years. And yet, I've never actually owned it. Bless and curse the internet all the same, in that regard I guess. Certainly their least exploratory and safest album, Among My Swan still strikes me as Dave and Hope's overall most accomplished album. It's also definitely their most acoustic-based. Things like 'Cry Cry' and 'Disappear' are downright pastoral, when you really take a step back and consider it. Will Reid's feature on 'Take Everything' is an indie dork landmark and really representative of the whole album: a boozy, slow-paced haze of an album. It's always been my favorite of the band's three albums and it's pretty darn relevant, even fifteen years after the fact. Loverly music, through and through.

Mazzy Star — So Tonight that I Might See (1993)

What the band is remembered for, and rightly so, as it's a darn fine album. Of course, the big hit was 'Fade Into You' and it still holds up after this long. But I still prefer the quieter, more acoustic-based side of the band. 'Five String Serenade' is unstintingly wonderful and things like 'Unreflected' and 'Into Dust' only make me happier. The title track ends things sounding like Crazy Horse meets the Pentangle and I can't help but think that this is one of weirdest hit albums of the 90's.

Jon Hassell — Fascinoma (1999)

I mean, Jon Hassell just does something else entirely all the time. Is it jazz? Is it new age? Is it ambient? No, not quite. And yet, it could easily fit into any of the above. I think I've actually found the manifesto for people who have the boldness to ask me what his music sounds like. And it's on this album. His Martin Denny-meets-electric Miles makeover of 'Caravan' (retitled here 'Caravanesque') is an in-general statement of purpose for a master. Funny how this album is now over a decade old and yet, it still sounds completely new and wonderful. I really should have more Hassell albums around. No excuses.

~Austin