Jon Hassell - Seeing Through Sound (Pentimento Volume Two) (LP)

Seeing Through Sound arrives as the second chapter in Jon Hassell’s late-period Pentimento series, and it feels both like a summing up and a final set of fresh footprints. Issued in 2020 on his Ndeya imprint, it follows 2018’s Listening To Pictures, and again leans into the idea of pentimento from painting, where earlier layers show through the surface. That image suits Hassell perfectly. His trumpet moves like a voice half remembered, with electronics, samples and percussion patterns bleeding in and out of focus so you hear multiple temporal layers at once.

Hassell’s Fourth World vision has been borrowed, bent and quoted by generations now, but this record shows how alive his original spark still was. The pieces rise from quiet detail rather than big gestures. A muted trumpet figure hovers, a hand drum loops like a heartbeat, then a low synth shadow glides underfoot. He doesn’t crowd the canvas. He lets your ears adjust, so a single bent note or a stray clap lands with weight. It’s music that rewards patience and good speakers, but it also hums along nicely with the Sunday arvo light coming through the blinds.

What gives the album its pull is that dual sense of travel and stillness. Hassell’s writing slips between a slow, humid drift and rhythms that feel half-remembered from some other coastline. You can trace the lineage back to Possible Musics with Brian Eno, but he’s not trading on nostalgia. The sound design is more granular here, almost tactile. Little swirls of room tone, snippets of voice or breath, a rustle that might be strings or might be a field recording. He spoke often about “vertical listening” in this period, and you can hear it in the way each track stacks micro-events for the ear to explore. Pan your focus and a different melody pops out. Shift again and the rhythm becomes the star.

The trumpet tone remains the guiding light. Hassell’s phrasing is conversational, hushed and conspiratorial, like he’s telling you something just for you. It’s not jazz in any orthodox sense, yet it keeps the improviser’s alertness. Notes bend into each other and dissolve in reverb. The effect is eerily human, which is why small production choices matter so much. The percussion often sits slightly off centre, dry and intimate, while the harmonic bed feels humid and wide. That push and pull between intimacy and haze is where the magic happens.

Hassell’s influence on ambient and experimental music is well documented, and the timing of this release gave it another resonance. Mid 2020 was a strange, quiet year. Seeing Through Sound felt like a gently lit room when the world outside was noisy in more ways than one. It invites you to listen the way you look at a painting, letting earlier gestures show through the new ones. It’s as if he’s walking you around his own archive, pointing out details you might have missed the first time.

If you’re crate digging, the Seeing Through Sound vinyl is the way to live with this record. The low end has room to breathe and the upper harmonics on the horn sit sweet without turning brittle. I first spun it in a friend’s living room in Brunswick after a lazy afternoon at a Melbourne record store, and it hung in the air long after the needle lifted. There’s a reason people chase Jon Hassell vinyl. The albums reward repeated plays and good setups. If you’re looking to buy Jon Hassell records online, this one is essential, sitting neatly with Listening To Pictures and older touchstones like Power Spot. Collectors who keep an eye on Jon Hassell albums on vinyl know these Ndeya pressings tend to be thoughtfully put together, sleeve notes included, which adds to the pleasure if you’re into vinyl records Australia wide and like the full tactile ritual.

As a late work, it has an extra pang. Hassell passed away in 2021, and this volume reads like a calm farewell without ever tipping into sentimentality. No grand finale, just a patient deepening of ideas he had refined for decades. The craft is there, the curiosity is there, and the sense of place that is many places at once is there. Seeing Through Sound doesn’t try to explain itself. It trusts your ears. Give it time, and those earlier layers start to glow through the new paint, which is the whole point of pentimento and a lovely way to hear the world.