Jon Hassell – Farafina / FLASH OF THE SPIRIT

Working with Burkinese drummers and dancers Farafina, and assisted by co-production from legendary studio duo Brian Eno & Daniel Lanois, Hassell helms an album that most beautifully lives up to his Fourth World concept, whose roots he outlines as: “My aim was to make a music that was vertically integrated in such a way that at any cross-sectional moment you were not able to pick a single element out as being from a particular country or genre of music.”

Fair to say that ‘Flash of the Spirit’ is a masterpiece of the Fourth World interzone. Taking its title from the book by Robert Farris Thompson about the adaptation of African cultures to America, it features Hassell, Eno and Lanois turning recordings of the West African drummers into phantasmic, rhythmelodic reflections of themselves, with intricate percussive patterns diffracted between a range of ecstatic, searching, and lushed-out scenes that resemble the music of Miles Davis as much as Terry Riley.