Jon Hassell

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
heading more towards an ambient space and breaking out of rock and jazz limitations but maintaining that trance quality
plenty of those people - as well as Reich, Henry Flynt, Yoshi Wada, Taj-Mahal Travellers, etc - accomplished some or all of those things

[shrugs] I've listened to a lot of avant-classical, early electronics, rock or jazz fused with non-Western influences, early ambient, etc over the years

yall aren't gonna convince me that his records are any good. if you guys like them, that's great.

Hassell - not helped by the conceptual framework - is much closer to the reams of waffling, toothless 80s New Age
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
there's a lot of bad yet (inexplicably) highly regarded records in that vein from the late 70s thru the mid 80s or so. Jorge Reyes for example.
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
Was gonna add, I'm sure you've seen the New Age "revival" - scare quotes 'cos it's not really any kinda lived thing, totally driven by crate diggers looking for the latest frontier. I can get with as it tweaks my taste in odd cultural artefacts. The same thing is happening re. smooth 80s jazz atm.
 

luka

Well-known member
smoothness in general has been reappraised over the last decade or two. one of those reversals in taste which are enacted every once in a while.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
Any recommendations? I don't know their stuff at all.
Henry Flynt is heavy electric violin drone, so be warned. combining his Appalachian roots with raga and minimalism.

he's a super interesting dude, possibly the weirdest and most unique of all the many unique weirdos of the early 60s NYC avant-garde scene

my favorite record ever

also amazing

less drone, more avant-garde violin tape manipulation

he also - playing guitar - had a kinda hillbilly version of the Velvet Underground, with Walter de Maria, called Henry Flynt + the Insurrections
 

luka

Well-known member
i havent got to grips with quotations on this new software either Danny. it's beyond me.
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
seduction by glossy image and so on.

Reminds me of some of the threads we've had here.

From my understanding, some of the interest in smoothness on the jazz front comes from tracing what the Fire music players of the 60s and 70s ended up doing later. What a contrast. The revolution defanged and turned into driving music.

A mate of mine is very into this stuff, and says the weird edge really comes to the fore when you start listening to all the self published CD-Rs via CD Baby etc
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
La Monte Young's ideas were kind of impossible to properly capture on record but this as close as you get


he's the king of the American minimalists, or the most pure or minimal of the minimalists

he had this concept the Theatre of Eternal Music where people improvise around holding single pitch drones for hours and hours at a time

as a kind of gesamtkunstwerk of lived art. I'm not explaining it very well.

anyway, a million important people in the early 60s NYC art scene did time in his group

including John Cale and other early VU members Tony Conrad (like Henry Flynt, a former math major at Harvard) and Angus MacLise, as well as Hassell

then wound up studying with Pandit Pran Nath in the 70s

him and his partner Marian Zazeela do a lot with their voices as you can hear on those records
 
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