Personnel includes: Jon Hassell (trumpet, pottery drums); Michael Brook (bass); Walter DeMaia (drums); Brian Eno (drums, bowl gongs, bells); Miguel Frasconi (bowl gongs); Daniel Lanois.
Volume One of Jon Hassell and Brian Eno's "Fourth World" report remains a classic recording of electronic, mutant gamelan and exotic indigenous musics that truly bridges many worlds. DREAM THEORY IN MALAYA (4TH WORLD II) picks up right where its predecessor left off, eking out even more convoluted paths into the dense shrubs and foliage of the cyberjungle.
DREAM THEORY IN MALAYA, featuring collaborators Eno and Daniel Lanois, is one of Hassell's finest moments. Hassell's remarkable trumpet tone, all tone smears and monsoon breaths, is at its peak on "Dream Theory," wherein insect-like tribesmen make ritual whoopee amid cavalcades of thick, throbbing log drums. At once alien and awe-inspiring, this music is so highly individual that it has yet to be eclipsed-even by Hassell himself. "Datu Bintung at Jelong" further probes the gamelan/juju interface, splicing in the respiratory sounds of metallic harps-vibrating electronic chorales and strange, mechanistic breathing.
