Jon Hassell
Fourth World, Volume 2: Dream Theory in Malaya

Dazed by a half-sleep, I find myself searching for distant worlds, primitive energies, ancestral sounds. Did Rimbaud's pen paint cities and people not of this earth? Hassell's trumpet can do it too; I cling to it like the most miserable of castaways; it will take me, a drunken boat drifting, into a jungle of dreams... Or rather, a dream jungle.

Cold anthropology and arcane metaphysics fused in a miraculous balance. Muggy electronics overheating aboriginal percussion; magical rites meticulously calibrated that celebrate the mysteries of Nature.

Hassell's omniscient trumpet slithers thick and discreet, muttering and muffled. It settles on the Whole, impregnating it with its scent; spirals of smoke exhaled deeply. It recreates the Whole by reshaping its colors; lead smoke dissolving the contours of things, blending them together.

And then you will see tigers and plants, stones and rivers, undergrowth and flowers, aborigines and howling monkeys; you will see them for what they truly are. Colors forming a painting, notes composing a symphony, years narrating a life.

Hassell like Fahey, alchemists of sound who have found the philosopher's stone; visible reality transforms into Reality.