Maarifa Street Magic Realism Vol 2 | Desertcart Portugal
Maarifa Street: Magic Realism, Vol. 2
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Product ID: 8833954
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Product Description This is a unique blend of free jazz and electronica. Beginning with three live concerts, each recorded in four instrumental layers, some performances were left intact, other layers were either re-performed or invented anew. Some layers migrated from one performance to another. Other completely new layers were made by cannibalizing parts from previous works and reshaping them. .com In an era of world fusions and unlikely global collaborations, Jon Hassell continues reformulating the alchemy of his Fourth World music in fascinating and original ways. Maarifa Street is his first electric album in some time, and it's a deliriously seductive brew of Miles Davis-meets-dub stuttered through sampled groove fractures. Drawn from live recordings made over the last few years, the album illustrates Hassell's gift for carving soundscapes in real time, laying his breathy, harmonized trumpet lines across an interior panorama of ambient voodoo jazz. Playing mostly with guitar mutant Rick Cox over deep dub bass lines from Peter Freeman, Hassell's music is fractal in its constant reinvention. The deeper you go, the more varied it becomes, as self-similar patterns are spun and shaped into ever more complex designs. Tunisian singer Dhafer Youssef adds his desert cries to Hassell's verdant mix on tracks like "Divine S.O.S." and "Open Secret." Although Maarifa Street's source material is live, the sound is studio-designed, with performances mixed, matched, and collaged in a fashion not unlike the cover by Abdul Mati Klarwein (who did Santana's Abraxas and Miles Davis's Bitches Brew). With an extreme stereo mix, instruments appear, shift, morph, and swirl, as if on a slo-mo carousel plopped into a global bazaar of the imagination. The subtitle of the album is Magic Realism 2, marking it as a sequel to Aka-Darbari-Java, Hassell's 1983 album of mosaic-like designs. But Maarifa Street is easier to grab onto, and the throbbing bass, programmed pulse fragments, and his innately melodic trumpet carry you through this strange world. --John Diliberto
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Review "..to speak of vibe is to speak of this record you sent, my hat is off, my head is bowed." -- Ry Cooder (2005)"Hassell's albums (should be) broadcast on their own radio and cable stations 24 hours a day." -- Vanity Fair, Robert Walsh"Miles Davis and Jon Hassell... both (serious) musicians who have nevertheless crossed the boundaries that separate 'art' and 'popular' music." -- New York Times"Music which conveys the impression of gossamer-like veils floating gradually to earth.... at once eery and beautiful." -- The Wire (UK), March 2005, Colin Buttimer"Teeming with details, free as the wind blowing in the desert, this celestial jazz is amazing." Five Stars. -- Playboy (France), April 2005 See more
Reviews
4.9
All from verified purchases
P**G
A Looking Back...
What a way to mix the new and newer-not a retrospective, but it could certainly serve as such. Perhaps also a way to introduce Jon Hassell to the unititiated. As can be said of all his work, Maarifa Street: Magic Realism, Vol. 2 is highly recommended.After 30 years and just a handful of recordings, this man is a giant of modern music and still a secret at the same time. Unless one hears a soundtrack or some theme music, his sound never reaches the ears of the greater public. One wonders why he has spawned no other composers or bands who are directly influenced by his work. Perhaps it is time...
T**R
... you are hearing for the first time It is like walking the backstreets of Rome or Savannah
Just capivatingIt comes on and every time you are hearing for the first timeIt is like walking the backstreets of Rome or Savannah...you just never know what you will find
L**R
The continuing impact of Miles
It's impossible for a trumpet player in the jazz, worldbeat, fusion, world jazz, or "interstitial" arenas not to have been influenced by Miles Davis, with one of the most obvious examples being Tim Hagans. Jon Hassell shows that influence as well, but at the same time moves things far beyond what Miles did.It's not just the presence of musicians from different parts of the world that marks Hassell's music as different; after all, Miles had Indian musicians playing with him (and there's the recent "Miles from India" tribute double CD with both American and Indian musicians fusing their talents on some of the better Miles tracks). Hassell uses repetitive slow-groove rhythm patterns over which he improvises his electronically modified trumpet sounds that are sinuous, sensuous, hypnotic--he's creating a kind of surreal mesh of In a Silent Way and something new, different.The two different versions of Open Secret on this album are interesting; on one, there's a Middle Eastern musician who contributes both vocal and oud tonalities. The other does not include this coloring; you can hear the same slow underneath rhythm pattern. This is a continuation of the Hassell of Fourth World and the first Magic Realism album and while there may be nothing startlingly new here, there is certainly enough of interest to mesmerize the listener.It's probably in an effort to move beyond this seguing series that Hassell's more recent collaborative album, "The Tubes", is radically different; it's a collaboration with electronic music composer Michael Fahres and basically eschews world music influences.Someone had mentioned or suggested a collaboration of Hassell and Bill Laswell. An intriguing prospect...but I doubt it would happen. I think they are in different "spaces". Yes, there is certainly heavy world music impact on music by both artists. But this is not a collaboration that strikes me as being likely.Maarifa Street is, 3 years old, the album that Hassell still lists on his website as his most recent; it is, as a solo project. It will be interesting to see if and when he decides to do his next solo project how similar or different it will be from this engaging style he has developed.
C**H
Hassell as magus-emeritus
Perhaps the most studio-wrought Hassel album of all. Goregeous weaving of live-captured performances with studio overdubs. Very Dub/ Jazz sounding at times, but that's not a put down. The latter half of the album sees a return to earlier atmospheres. I would say, a combo of Power Spot and City: Works of Fiction in its musical background. Yet it takes a life all of its own. Must-have for everyone, especially for the Hassel neofites, due to its trademark, yet accessible sound.
M**O
Not his best but unique sound
In his long career Hassell has created a very personal sound, not only with his trumpet but with all his ensembles that he bring in the direction he likes. Maybe this is not one of his best CD but in few seconds you can easily recognize his music that is different from any other musician. While other similar artists like Eno are making musical flops (listen to Another Day...) Hassell continues his artistic journey with no compromises and we are grateful to him.
S**3
His best CD in many years
A couple of things I particularly like about this fine recording. Hassell uses, here, a trumpet sound that falls somewhere on the continuum between the highly processed voice we remember from Fourth World Vol 1 and the straighter sound he employed on Fascinoma. This time it's recognizable both as Jon Hassell AND as a trumpet. The other real jewel here is terrific bass playing. Highly recommended CD.
B**N
Maarifa Street
Jon Hassell is perhaps best known for his collaborations with Brian Eno & bands such as the Talking Heads - he made that breathy almost voice like trumpet sound on "Remain In Light" for instance.He is a visionary master musician with a varied career of his own spanning many years, having studied & worked with luminaries such as Stockhausen, Terry Riley & the Hindustani raga master, Pandit Pran Nath.On this disc we see him teamed up with an excellent emsemble of musicians including the brilliant Dhafer Yousseff (of "The Electric Sufi")on vocals & oud.The tracks are based upon live recordings but comprise of four layers of music so that the live material is woven with the precise detail of studio sound.The sound is jazzy, low tempo, dreamy & surreal & there is a poignant dedication to the dead psychedelic artist Mati Klarwein in the sleeve notes, whose work on the inside of the cover captures the contemplative & imaginative nature of the music. Love it!
R**R
One of Hassell's Opulent Masterpieces
"Maarifa Street" is Jon Hassell's 2005 album that returns him to territory originally conceived and explored back in the early 80's. Only this time he's had years of experience that takes from all those lessons and refines the original explorations in beautifully subtle and virtuosic ways. "Maarifa Street" is 'late period' work and the vintage of his art shines nobly and augustly here with nothing else to equal it in his catalogue except for the recent "Last Night the Moon Came Dropping its Clothes in the Street". You can see how he got to "Last Night", an utterly unparalleled work of art, with this fascinating set that draws on several intriguing moments in his long career. As the sub-title to the album, "Magic Realism 2", suggests "Maarifa" is a continuation of the technique he explored on 1983's "Aka/Darbari/Java" wherein a lot of his music was digitally captured, sampled and re-constructed in fractal layers that built and built upon themselves. But "Maarifa Street" is not just a repeat of an 80's technique and style, there are other references to previous work as well. One that stands out is his re-working of the main motif of "The Gods Must Be Crazy" from 1994's "Dressing For Pleasure", done with Bluescreen. Here he takes the main driving motif of "The Gods" and it's basic rhythm, samples some of it , and fashions new bass and lead melody lines in a strikingly funky and elegant re-working. The result is a newer look, another POV on a great piece. Accordingly, this more recent version is called "New Gods". Then on the next track "Darbari Bridge", a sample of the sampled loop of a trumpet line and some synth washes from the "Aka/Darbari/Java album itself is used as background to form a wonderfully quantum relationship with the earlier work. The end of the piece returns to the original sample of the synth and Indonesian "percussion" loops of the first recording in a perfectly appropriate and completing full-circle.This is a lot of the way Hassell works and it, rather than being derivative or unoriginal, works a wonderful magic. To Hassell the universe is a complex web out of time and singularity where past and present are quantumly in direct relationship. He loves to explore those relationships and leap off from them into unique, new expressions that open up a lot of intriguing possibilities. "Possible Musics" was a term he once used in proposing a kind of "coffee-coloured" music of the future which demonstrated a category-free melding of the latest digital technology the colour 'white' ), mixed with a jazz sensability and the freshness of third world, non-western musics the colours 'brown' and 'black' ). He also called it "Fourth World". His earlier recordings really dove into this rich realm of possibility and can best be heard on "Fourth World Volume 1: Possible Musics", done in collaboration with Brian Eno, "Dreamy Theory in Malaya: Fourth World Volume 2" and on the aforementioned "Aka/Darbari/Java - Magic Realism"."Maarifa Street" starts out with a medium-tempoed, jazz-ish piece of laid-back 'fourth world' funk and eventually melds into the very Miles Davis-like title track. Hassell's softly 'breathy' trumpet plays a sinuous, echoing, line over some really nice electronic work and 'midnight' jazz bass. Atmospherics abound but all is sublimated, including Hassell himself, in the bigger musical picture. "Warm Shift" picks up the moderate tempo again and continues with the live sampling that makes every Jon Hassell album perfectly re-createable in performance. In fact, most of the pieces on "Maarifa Street" are live performances that have been taken into the studio and played over and finessed in various ways as to use the live material as launching points to a more articulated expression.A notable point to be made of Hassell's inspiration as well is his close and very functional relationship to the visual arts. He often uses the visual art lexicon in coining definitions for the work he is doing with music - Magic Realism, a movement of 20th century art practice, is, of course, a name indicating a 'school' of painting that sought to create such photographic exactitude that it would be literally impossible to tell what was a photograph and what was a painting. For Hassell it means something else but it is yet another of one of his fertile 'leaping off points" into unprecedented exploration. Through these many years he has also retained his deeply involved appreciation and friendship with Israeli painter Abdul Mati Klarwein, the artist whose work creates 90% of "Maarifa Street's" exotic cover art. Klarwein, a visionary product of the 60's, acid, non-Western spiritual seeking and the influence of Salvador Dali, has illustrated many of Hassell's releases over the decades. Santana and Miles Davis have both used Klarwein's truly 'fantastic' work as well.So not only is Jon Hassell's work exotic and completely unlike anything else at all, it is, as well, very rigorously based in concept and idea. He is highly articulate and 'adamantinely' intelligent as well as a creative genius. His ideas are quite unlike anyone else's and yet he is able to lay them out for his audience with great simplicity and depth. Hassell shines at this and the notes to his albums are as fascinating and stimulating in their ideas as his eerily beautiful music. For "Maarifa Street" he has noted SEVERAL different "touchstones" off of which he launched the current album. One of which tellingly and appropriately explains how the title came to be. Maarifa Street is an actual location in Quatal Sukkar, Iraq. Hassell quitely points out that the word 'maarifa' in Arabic means, 'wisdom/knowledge' and that the two, wisdom and the Arabic "have been traveling companions for many centuries" - a reminder that once, outside of Western influence or judgement, Arabic culture flowered with an unsurpassed wisdom of great subtlety and profundity. He, therefore, suggests that the words "Maarifa Street", together, relay that relationship of wisdom travelling along as a companion quite nicely. For Hassell, that is best exemplified in the Sufi Poetry of Jalaluddin Rumi, whom he often quotes. Again, using the very latest technologies available to him as a Westerner, he nevertheless finds the deepest inspiration in things NON-Western. From that his opulent and otherworldly music, both so strangely unusual and yet so naturally familiar, has its wellspring."Maarifa Street" is an exotic, rich weave of intelligently considered points of view, expressed nevertheless with a great, creative intuition worthy of the training he received in Vedic singing. Jon Hassell is every much a seriously rigorous thinker as Brian Eno and his ideas of cultural pastiching may well be quite far ahead of his time. A brilliant man producing brilliant, gorgeous music that stands completely out of time and fashion.
V**A
GRANDE DISCO DI UN ISPIRATO JHON HASSELL
AVEVO CONOSCIUTO JHON HASSELL GRAZIE ALLE VARIE PRODUZIONI CHE BRIAN ENO AVEVA PROMOSSO CON LA SUA OBSCURED RECOD, NEI LONTANI ANNI '80. IL DISCO IN QUESTIONE MI HA FATTO RITROVARE UN MUSICISTA ANCORA PIU' RICCO E ISPIRATO.CONSIGLIATO.
S**T
Ottimo
Ottimo disco molto ben registrato, hanno collaborato dei grandi musicisti, peccato che l'apporto di Paolo Fresu sia stato limitato ad un brano, sarebbe interessante sentire dei duetti tra questi grandi musicisti.Jon Hassell non delude mai.
K**R
Klassiker erster Güte!
Maarifa Street von Jon Hassell: Ein Klassiker erster Güte! Ein bisschen Nils Peder Molvaer, ein bisschen Miles Davis. Aber eindeutig anders: Jon Hassel. Tiefste Bässe. Unendliche Ruhe! Nur von seiner eigenen nachfolgenden CD übertroffen:Last night the moon came dropping its clothes in the street: das grandiose Alterswerk mit Ausblick in die Unendlichkeit.
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\"..to speak of vibe is to speak of this record you sent, my hat is off, my head is bowed.\" -- Ry Cooder (2005)
\"Hassell's albums (should be) broadcast on their own radio and cable stations 24 hours a day.\" -- Vanity Fair, Robert Walsh
\"Miles Davis and Jon Hassell... both (serious) musicians who have nevertheless crossed the boundaries that separate 'art' and 'popular' music.\" -- New York Times
\"Music which conveys the impression of gossamer-like veils floating gradually to earth.... at once eery and beautiful.\" -- The Wire (UK), March 2005, Colin Buttimer
\"Teeming with details, free as the wind blowing in the desert, this celestial jazz is amazing.\" Five Stars. -- Playboy (France), April 2005
","image":["https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41L9E7yFuJL.jpg","https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/71dLLjqOXpL.jpg"],"offers":{"@type":"Offer","priceCurrency":"EUR","price":"56.01","itemCondition":"https://schema.org/NewCondition","availability":"https://schema.org/OutOfStock","shippingDetails":{"deliveryTime":{"@type":"ShippingDeliveryTime","minValue":6,"maxValue":6,"unitCode":"d"}}},"category":" danceandelectronic","review":[{"@type":"Review","reviewRating":{"@type":"Rating","ratingValue":"5.0"},"author":{"@type":"Person","name":"P***G"},"datePublished":"Reviewed in the United States on October 10, 2005","name":"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n \n \n A Looking Back...\n \n","reviewBody":"What a way to mix the new and newer-not a retrospective, but it could certainly serve as such. Perhaps also a way to introduce Jon Hassell to the unititiated. As can be said of all his work, Maarifa Street: Magic Realism, Vol. 2 is highly recommended.After 30 years and just a handful of recordings, this man is a giant of modern music and still a secret at the same time. Unless one hears a soundtrack or some theme music, his sound never reaches the ears of the greater public. One wonders why he has spawned no other composers or bands who are directly influenced by his work. Perhaps it is time..."},{"@type":"Review","reviewRating":{"@type":"Rating","ratingValue":"5.0"},"author":{"@type":"Person","name":"T***R"},"datePublished":"Reviewed in the United States on April 8, 2016","name":"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n \n \n ... you are hearing for the first time It is like walking the backstreets of Rome or Savannah\n \n","reviewBody":"Just capivatingIt comes on and every time you are hearing for the first timeIt is like walking the backstreets of Rome or Savannah...you just never know what you will find"},{"@type":"Review","reviewRating":{"@type":"Rating","ratingValue":"4.0"},"author":{"@type":"Person","name":"L***R"},"datePublished":"Reviewed in the United States on July 10, 2008","name":"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n \n \n The continuing impact of Miles\n \n","reviewBody":"It's impossible for a trumpet player in the jazz, worldbeat, fusion, world jazz, or \"interstitial\" arenas not to have been influenced by Miles Davis, with one of the most obvious examples being Tim Hagans. Jon Hassell shows that influence as well, but at the same time moves things far beyond what Miles did.It's not just the presence of musicians from different parts of the world that marks Hassell's music as different; after all, Miles had Indian musicians playing with him (and there's the recent \"Miles from India\" tribute double CD with both American and Indian musicians fusing their talents on some of the better Miles tracks). Hassell uses repetitive slow-groove rhythm patterns over which he improvises his electronically modified trumpet sounds that are sinuous, sensuous, hypnotic--he's creating a kind of surreal mesh of In a Silent Way and something new, different.The two different versions of Open Secret on this album are interesting; on one, there's a Middle Eastern musician who contributes both vocal and oud tonalities. The other does not include this coloring; you can hear the same slow underneath rhythm pattern. This is a continuation of the Hassell of Fourth World and the first Magic Realism album and while there may be nothing startlingly new here, there is certainly enough of interest to mesmerize the listener.It's probably in an effort to move beyond this seguing series that Hassell's more recent collaborative album, \"The Tubes\", is radically different; it's a collaboration with electronic music composer Michael Fahres and basically eschews world music influences.Someone had mentioned or suggested a collaboration of Hassell and Bill Laswell. An intriguing prospect...but I doubt it would happen. I think they are in different \"spaces\". Yes, there is certainly heavy world music impact on music by both artists. But this is not a collaboration that strikes me as being likely.Maarifa Street is, 3 years old, the album that Hassell still lists on his website as his most recent; it is, as a solo project. It will be interesting to see if and when he decides to do his next solo project how similar or different it will be from this engaging style he has developed."},{"@type":"Review","reviewRating":{"@type":"Rating","ratingValue":"5.0"},"author":{"@type":"Person","name":"C***H"},"datePublished":"Reviewed in the United States on December 24, 2005","name":"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n \n \n Hassell as magus-emeritus\n \n","reviewBody":"Perhaps the most studio-wrought Hassel album of all. Goregeous weaving of live-captured performances with studio overdubs. Very Dub/ Jazz sounding at times, but that's not a put down. The latter half of the album sees a return to earlier atmospheres. I would say, a combo of Power Spot and City: Works of Fiction in its musical background. Yet it takes a life all of its own. Must-have for everyone, especially for the Hassel neofites, due to its trademark, yet accessible sound."},{"@type":"Review","reviewRating":{"@type":"Rating","ratingValue":"4.0"},"author":{"@type":"Person","name":"M***O"},"datePublished":"Reviewed in the United States on August 28, 2005","name":"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n \n \n Not his best but unique sound\n \n","reviewBody":"In his long career Hassell has created a very personal sound, not only with his trumpet but with all his ensembles that he bring in the direction he likes. Maybe this is not one of his best CD but in few seconds you can easily recognize his music that is different from any other musician. While other similar artists like Eno are making musical flops (listen to Another Day...) Hassell continues his artistic journey with no compromises and we are grateful to him."},{"@type":"Review","reviewRating":{"@type":"Rating","ratingValue":"4.0"},"author":{"@type":"Person","name":"S***3"},"datePublished":"Reviewed in the United States on September 16, 2005","name":"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n \n \n His best CD in many years\n \n","reviewBody":"A couple of things I particularly like about this fine recording. Hassell uses, here, a trumpet sound that falls somewhere on the continuum between the highly processed voice we remember from Fourth World Vol 1 and the straighter sound he employed on Fascinoma. This time it's recognizable both as Jon Hassell AND as a trumpet. The other real jewel here is terrific bass playing. Highly recommended CD."},{"@type":"Review","reviewRating":{"@type":"Rating","ratingValue":"5.0"},"author":{"@type":"Person","name":"B***N"},"datePublished":"Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 20, 2005","name":"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n \n \n Maarifa Street\n \n","reviewBody":"Jon Hassell is perhaps best known for his collaborations with Brian Eno & bands such as the Talking Heads - he made that breathy almost voice like trumpet sound on \"Remain In Light\" for instance.He is a visionary master musician with a varied career of his own spanning many years, having studied & worked with luminaries such as Stockhausen, Terry Riley & the Hindustani raga master, Pandit Pran Nath.On this disc we see him teamed up with an excellent emsemble of musicians including the brilliant Dhafer Yousseff (of \"The Electric Sufi\")on vocals & oud.The tracks are based upon live recordings but comprise of four layers of music so that the live material is woven with the precise detail of studio sound.The sound is jazzy, low tempo, dreamy & surreal & there is a poignant dedication to the dead psychedelic artist Mati Klarwein in the sleeve notes, whose work on the inside of the cover captures the contemplative & imaginative nature of the music. Love it!"},{"@type":"Review","reviewRating":{"@type":"Rating","ratingValue":"5.0"},"author":{"@type":"Person","name":"R***R"},"datePublished":"Reviewed in Canada on September 30, 2011","name":"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n \n \n One of Hassell's Opulent Masterpieces\n \n","reviewBody":"\"Maarifa Street\" is Jon Hassell's 2005 album that returns him to territory originally conceived and explored back in the early 80's. Only this time he's had years of experience that takes from all those lessons and refines the original explorations in beautifully subtle and virtuosic ways. \"Maarifa Street\" is 'late period' work and the vintage of his art shines nobly and augustly here with nothing else to equal it in his catalogue except for the recent \"Last Night the Moon Came Dropping its Clothes in the Street\". You can see how he got to \"Last Night\", an utterly unparalleled work of art, with this fascinating set that draws on several intriguing moments in his long career. As the sub-title to the album, \"Magic Realism 2\", suggests \"Maarifa\" is a continuation of the technique he explored on 1983's \"Aka/Darbari/Java\" wherein a lot of his music was digitally captured, sampled and re-constructed in fractal layers that built and built upon themselves. But \"Maarifa Street\" is not just a repeat of an 80's technique and style, there are other references to previous work as well. One that stands out is his re-working of the main motif of \"The Gods Must Be Crazy\" from 1994's \"Dressing For Pleasure\", done with Bluescreen. Here he takes the main driving motif of \"The Gods\" and it's basic rhythm, samples some of it , and fashions new bass and lead melody lines in a strikingly funky and elegant re-working. The result is a newer look, another POV on a great piece. Accordingly, this more recent version is called \"New Gods\". Then on the next track \"Darbari Bridge\", a sample of the sampled loop of a trumpet line and some synth washes from the \"Aka/Darbari/Java album itself is used as background to form a wonderfully quantum relationship with the earlier work. The end of the piece returns to the original sample of the synth and Indonesian \"percussion\" loops of the first recording in a perfectly appropriate and completing full-circle.This is a lot of the way Hassell works and it, rather than being derivative or unoriginal, works a wonderful magic. To Hassell the universe is a complex web out of time and singularity where past and present are quantumly in direct relationship. He loves to explore those relationships and leap off from them into unique, new expressions that open up a lot of intriguing possibilities. \"Possible Musics\" was a term he once used in proposing a kind of \"coffee-coloured\" music of the future which demonstrated a category-free melding of the latest digital technology the colour 'white' ), mixed with a jazz sensability and the freshness of third world, non-western musics the colours 'brown' and 'black' ). He also called it \"Fourth World\". His earlier recordings really dove into this rich realm of possibility and can best be heard on \"Fourth World Volume 1: Possible Musics\", done in collaboration with Brian Eno, \"Dreamy Theory in Malaya: Fourth World Volume 2\" and on the aforementioned \"Aka/Darbari/Java - Magic Realism\".\"Maarifa Street\" starts out with a medium-tempoed, jazz-ish piece of laid-back 'fourth world' funk and eventually melds into the very Miles Davis-like title track. Hassell's softly 'breathy' trumpet plays a sinuous, echoing, line over some really nice electronic work and 'midnight' jazz bass. Atmospherics abound but all is sublimated, including Hassell himself, in the bigger musical picture. \"Warm Shift\" picks up the moderate tempo again and continues with the live sampling that makes every Jon Hassell album perfectly re-createable in performance. In fact, most of the pieces on \"Maarifa Street\" are live performances that have been taken into the studio and played over and finessed in various ways as to use the live material as launching points to a more articulated expression.A notable point to be made of Hassell's inspiration as well is his close and very functional relationship to the visual arts. He often uses the visual art lexicon in coining definitions for the work he is doing with music - Magic Realism, a movement of 20th century art practice, is, of course, a name indicating a 'school' of painting that sought to create such photographic exactitude that it would be literally impossible to tell what was a photograph and what was a painting. For Hassell it means something else but it is yet another of one of his fertile 'leaping off points\" into unprecedented exploration. Through these many years he has also retained his deeply involved appreciation and friendship with Israeli painter Abdul Mati Klarwein, the artist whose work creates 90% of \"Maarifa Street's\" exotic cover art. Klarwein, a visionary product of the 60's, acid, non-Western spiritual seeking and the influence of Salvador Dali, has illustrated many of Hassell's releases over the decades. Santana and Miles Davis have both used Klarwein's truly 'fantastic' work as well.So not only is Jon Hassell's work exotic and completely unlike anything else at all, it is, as well, very rigorously based in concept and idea. He is highly articulate and 'adamantinely' intelligent as well as a creative genius. His ideas are quite unlike anyone else's and yet he is able to lay them out for his audience with great simplicity and depth. Hassell shines at this and the notes to his albums are as fascinating and stimulating in their ideas as his eerily beautiful music. For \"Maarifa Street\" he has noted SEVERAL different \"touchstones\" off of which he launched the current album. One of which tellingly and appropriately explains how the title came to be. Maarifa Street is an actual location in Quatal Sukkar, Iraq. Hassell quitely points out that the word 'maarifa' in Arabic means, 'wisdom/knowledge' and that the two, wisdom and the Arabic \"have been traveling companions for many centuries\" - a reminder that once, outside of Western influence or judgement, Arabic culture flowered with an unsurpassed wisdom of great subtlety and profundity. He, therefore, suggests that the words \"Maarifa Street\", together, relay that relationship of wisdom travelling along as a companion quite nicely. For Hassell, that is best exemplified in the Sufi Poetry of Jalaluddin Rumi, whom he often quotes. Again, using the very latest technologies available to him as a Westerner, he nevertheless finds the deepest inspiration in things NON-Western. From that his opulent and otherworldly music, both so strangely unusual and yet so naturally familiar, has its wellspring.\"Maarifa Street\" is an exotic, rich weave of intelligently considered points of view, expressed nevertheless with a great, creative intuition worthy of the training he received in Vedic singing. Jon Hassell is every much a seriously rigorous thinker as Brian Eno and his ideas of cultural pastiching may well be quite far ahead of his time. A brilliant man producing brilliant, gorgeous music that stands completely out of time and fashion."},{"@type":"Review","reviewRating":{"@type":"Rating","ratingValue":"4.0"},"author":{"@type":"Person","name":"V***A"},"datePublished":"Reviewed in Italy on October 14, 2019","name":"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n \n GRANDE DISCO DI UN ISPIRATO JHON HASSELL\n \n \n","reviewBody":"AVEVO CONOSCIUTO JHON HASSELL GRAZIE ALLE VARIE PRODUZIONI CHE BRIAN ENO AVEVA PROMOSSO CON LA SUA OBSCURED RECOD, NEI LONTANI ANNI '80. IL DISCO IN QUESTIONE MI HA FATTO RITROVARE UN MUSICISTA ANCORA PIU' RICCO E ISPIRATO.CONSIGLIATO."},{"@type":"Review","reviewRating":{"@type":"Rating","ratingValue":"5.0"},"author":{"@type":"Person","name":"S***T"},"datePublished":"Reviewed in Italy on October 27, 2018","name":"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n \n Ottimo\n \n \n","reviewBody":"Ottimo disco molto ben registrato, hanno collaborato dei grandi musicisti, peccato che l'apporto di Paolo Fresu sia stato limitato ad un brano, sarebbe interessante sentire dei duetti tra questi grandi musicisti.Jon Hassell non delude mai."},{"@type":"Review","reviewRating":{"@type":"Rating","ratingValue":"5.0"},"author":{"@type":"Person","name":"K***R"},"datePublished":"Reviewed in Germany on October 25, 2013","name":"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n \n Klassiker erster Güte!\n \n \n","reviewBody":"Maarifa Street von Jon Hassell: Ein Klassiker erster Güte! Ein bisschen Nils Peder Molvaer, ein bisschen Miles Davis. Aber eindeutig anders: Jon Hassel. Tiefste Bässe. Unendliche Ruhe! Nur von seiner eigenen nachfolgenden CD übertroffen:Last night the moon came dropping its clothes in the street: das grandiose Alterswerk mit Ausblick in die Unendlichkeit."}],"aggregateRating":{"@type":"AggregateRating","ratingValue":4.636363636363637,"bestRating":5,"ratingCount":11}}
