Jon Hassell
Power Spot

THE REVIEW

"For the seers, or men of Toltec knowledge, sorcery is the art of manipulating perception and has nothing to do with the negative connotations associated with the term in the West. The Toltec sorcerers or shamans aim at freedom. To achieve this end, they do not perform strange rites and incantations nor do they create magic potions, for such acts would be nonsense." from C. Castaneda

In this case, the shaman is Jon Hassell, an American and not a Toltec. A man who possesses the gift of manipulating perception through his music, a music that emerges from a sulfurous, warm, and tropical universe, a universe where psychedelia as a hallucinatory experience finds better its cultural connotations, connotations that, to be clear, refer back to the experiences of another Western shaman, such as Aldous Huxley.

The music is plasmatic, tribally percussive, seven compositions that have a hypnotic stride, all filtered through Hassell's trumpet and accompanied by a group of musicians, including Brian Eno, Michael Brook, Richard Horowitz to name a few, in perfect harmony indeed in osmosis, musical osmosis that brings the listener into a trance state.

The compositions do not differ much from one another, but for those who are passionate about details, I can mention "Passage D.E.", "Solaire," or "The Elephant and the Orchid." In reality, the album is a unique work divided into seven chapters. This is not a review and could never be, it is a travel note of an experience lived for 50 minutes, an experience that makes me musically live every time I listen, touching the deepest and most intimate chords of my being, a language that involves the exoteric hemisphere (you read that right, not esoteric).

The CD is over, the spell is dissolved, who knows if Castaneda ever listened to Hassell.