Any day of the year is ideal for listening to Jon Hassellâs music, but seeing as today marks the vernal equinox, you might as well listen to his 1978 debut album marking this auspicious occasion. Vernal Equinox isnât Hassellâs best full-lengthâthat would be Dream Theory in Malayaâbut it is another exquisitely wrought example of the trumpeterâs unique expression of eerie and exotic ambience that he termed Fourth World music.
The opening track âToucan Oceanâ is one of the most haunting and beautiful pieces of music Iâve ever heard. Throughout Vernal Equinox, you can hear how Hassellâs study of Indian Kirana vocal technique with Pandit Pran Nath led to his distinctively mellifluous and distortedly avian/animalistic trumpet sound. Shakers, rattles, mbira, tabla, dumbek, congas, and David Rosenboomâs âBuchla Synthesizer alterationâ form a humid, twitchy jungle bed of activity over which Hassellâs itinerant trumpet emanations unpredictably waft. Ambient-music pioneer and Hassell collaborator Brian Eno spoke highly of the record in The Guardian: "This record fascinated me. It was a dreamy, strange, meditative music that was inflected by Indian, African and South American music, but also seemed located in the lineage of tonal minimalism. It was a music I felt I'd been waiting for."
In a 2009 review of Hassellâs late-era masterpiece, Last Night the Moon Came Dropping Its Clothes, I wrote, âHassell has carved out a unique tonal palette with an instrument that speaks sotto voce in alien tongues.â Vernal Equinox is where that talent first punctured the public consciousness, and it remains a crucial part of this singular musicianâs canon.