Jon Hassell – Fourth World Vol. 1: Possible Musics (1980)
By Rafi Mercer
A trumpet enters, but it does not sound like a trumpet as you know it. The tone is softened, stretched, processed until it resembles something between a voice and a flute, plaintive and luminous. Beneath it, percussion murmurs, drones shimmer, rhythms rise and dissolve like weather. This is Fourth World Vol. 1: Possible Musics, released in 1980 by Jon Hassell in collaboration with Brian Eno. It is an album that seems to hover outside of time, fusing ancient ritual with electronic futurism, a sound-world that Hassell described as “a unified primitive/futuristic sound combining features of world ethnic styles with advanced electronic techniques.”
Listening on vinyl, the textures are striking. The warmth of Hassell’s electronically treated trumpet resonates with uncanny intimacy, each note glowing like light refracted through water. Percussion instruments, often hand-played, give the music a tactile quality, grounding the ethereal layers in earth and skin. Eno’s influence is felt in the production: patient, spacious, attentive to decay and silence. The result is a record that feels alive, breathing, constantly unfolding. Played in a listening bar, Possible Musics transforms atmosphere into dreamscape, a sonic incense that fills space without overpowering it.
Tracks like “Chemistry” and “Delta Rain Dream” are less compositions than environments, sonic ecologies in which instruments move like animals or spirits. Hassell’s trumpet drifts above with dignity and fragility, sounding simultaneously human and unearthly. There is no climax, no resolution; instead, the music lingers, invites, surrounds. It is music that opens doors rather than closes them.
Decades on, the record feels prophetic. Its influence is audible across ambient, electronic, and global fusion music, from the chill-out rooms of the 1990s to contemporary experimental scenes. Yet it remains distinct, impossible to copy because it is so rooted in Hassell’s singular sensibility. To hear it now is to hear both the past and the future in dialogue, to inhabit a possible world created entirely of sound.
Rafi Mercer writes about the spaces where music matters. For more stories from Tracks & Tales, subscribe here, or click here to read more.
