This week's PBS Feature Album is Music Is Invisible (Pentimento Volume Three) by Jon Hassell. The third part of his Pentimento Trilogy, this album captures the late Jon Hassell performing his final ever concert as part of a trio with Rick Cox and John von Seggern at St John at Hackney church, London in 2015, carefully edited and mixed by Jeff Rona into something that is much more than a traditional ‘live album’.
Themes, motifs and riffs from Hassell’s two final albums Listening To Pictures and Seeing Through Sound occur throughout these unique, semi-improvised mutations, making this a fitting final volume in the late career renaissance of the Pentimento series.
‘Pentimento’ is defined as “the appearance in a painting of earlier images, forms, or strokes that have been changed and painted over”, a methodology that Jon applied in a musical sense throughout his career, refining and developing his approach over time.
Specifically, Hassell would take previous recordings, whether captured audio from a concert he had performed, or snippets of rehearsals, and use it as base material to play fresh parts over. Or he would take certain sections and loop them into a whole new piece, echoing the ‘version’ approach of dub reggae music from Jamaica filtered through his love of Teo Macero’s radical tape cut-ups of Miles Davis in the 1970s.
Tune in all this week to hear tracks from Music Is Invisible. PBS Members have the chance to win a copy of the album on vinyl - simply email your name and membership number to before midnight Sunday October 11.
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TOP TRACKS WE'RE LOVING THIS WEEK
Fatima al Qadiri - '7ilween' feat. Bobo Secret & Lama3an
Faulsk & Pugilist - 'Exhalation'
Standing Circle - 'New Flower'
Audrey Powne - 'Two Sides'
Liz Stringer - Sister
Immy Owusu - Hard People
Hannah Cameron - Arm's Length
Sienna Tenn - Are We Lovers?
Delivery - 'Measuring Cup'
Full Flower Moon Band - 'Endless Summer'
