On the topic of sampling, from the early 80s onwards you were using a Fairlight CMI, is that right?
Yeah, that was on one of my favorites: Aka / Darbari / Java. That was the first keyboard manipulation of sampled pitches. So I could play a Pygmy sample, as parallel fifths or as another chord or something like that. That was 1983, and I think that was a super important moment in musical history, as far as I’m concerned.
Were you also using the Fairlight to make the rhythm patterns on that record?
No, those were all pretty much loops of Abdou M’Boup the great Senegalese drummer, either slowed down or sped up and then layered. We’d make a loop around the studio, literally, with the tape going around mic stands so the tape would actually be coming through the head and going around the room because in those days you didn’t have a long digital loop like that.
Especially on Aka / Darbari / Java, on Dream Theory in Malaya and on Power Spot, the rhythms are not in 4/4 but somehow have a very persuasive groove to them.
Yeah, that’s the one thing I think I has to be challenged – and this is not Ableton’s fault or the fault of technology necessarily – but this idea that suddenly everything is 4 by 4 by 4, you know? I mean after all, if you’re looking at other parts of the world and taking inspirations in that then you certainly can’t overlook the fact that certain feelings come from a way of imitating. I usually use the analogy of a falling leaf where it doesn’t get divided up into 52 equal sections. I mean I suppose it could be recreated, but that kind of motion of falling down, catching a little breeze and then falling again, maybe being accelerated by something, that kind of movement is really beautiful. And that’s why raga is so beautiful, because raga does that, also Persian music and African music too. Persian and Indian music more in the sense of melody but the rhythms of African music, or lots of it anyway, is that way too – it doesn’t run by the metronome.
Stream: Jon Hassell – Listening To Pictures (Pentimento Volume One)
