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Jack Hassall

 
Jack Hassall

Jack Hassall is an independent unsigned guitarist/composer from Manchester, England.

3 top 1
11 top 50
18 songs
104K plays
1
Picture for song 'Taxi Dance Revisited' by artist 'Jack Hassall'

Taxi Dance Revisited

... the cool breeze jazz of Taxi Dance Revisited with its George Benson / Larry Carlton influences shining through loud, proud and strong.
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Picture for song 'Au Revoir' by artist 'Jack Hassall'

Au Revoir

It takes exactly one minute for the bass to enter, but when it does .... wham!! A very moody minor bluesey featuring knockout female vocals. It all converges at the end - no accident! Hope you like it!!
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3
Picture for song 'Hyanis Rain' by artist 'Jack Hassall'

Hyanis Rain

Sophisticated and introspective, gentle and melodic, bluesy and jazzy electric guitar.
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4
Picture for song 'Train 2 Nowhere' by artist 'Jack Hassall'

Train 2 Nowhere

Smooth, latin influenced jazzy guitar instrumental.
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5
Picture for song 'Mood Swing' by artist 'Jack Hassall'

Mood Swing

Listener comment: "I was surfing the charts at mp3.com and your song MOOD SWING kept me locked in for its full duration."
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Jack Hassall is the craftsman of eclectic persona strumming down the cosmic road of digital reverberation and subtle ambiance. His shimmering cascades of audio light reflect a pastel of rainbows. The sonic beauty and creative gleam of a master craftsman of music, mood and nuance. Jack Hassall's work reflects a multitude of influences that are fused into something that careens under the surface of an enormous deep dark green-blue ocean whilst gazing simultaneously at the pale blue lilac sky. Tunes like 'Fanfare' pulsate electronic groove with horn accents; 'E-thang' segues into counterpoint bass and clavinet with a sheen of ambiance strings and three chord progression hook. In 'Boogie Song' the genre flips to retro dance blues. Jack Hassall's blues roots are showcased in 'Au Revoir' and his acoustic guitar balladry coupled with female soul vox melodies minus lyrics. The harmonica singed FX laden track 'Blue Suede Shoes' is a dreamscape heavy dance beat of delays; The slide guitar majesty of 'Stella Blues' shines with reverberated expression. Jack Hassall is equally enthralling in a smooth jazz fusion mode via songs such as 'Taxi Dance Revisited' and 'Hyanis Rain' with its open air feel; As are cuts like 'Train To Nowhere' with its subtle nuance and the airy breeze of 'Mood Swing'. The scenic and classic effect of the electric guitar driven 'Findaway' compliment cuts like 'Day Trip' and its melancholy pop-rock pocket sublime. The distant vista of tunes like 'Steady Eddie' contrast songs such as 'Higher Baby' and its merging of R&B energy-urgency. To come full swing in this carousel of musical colors and capacities we come upon brilliant cuts like 'Why Can't You' ; It's magnificent shimmering hook laden with cascades of ambiance and synthesizer background awash in sly production and mix down digital delay/reverb as to be surmised as a pop/rock gem of inflection reflected aura-sonic. Again witnessed in 'Sweet Sweet Love' we find a moody string with atmospheric effulgence, radiating outwards from the listeners senses to the innermost area of emotion and feeling. This conveys the mastery and unique talent of an artistic British enigma from Manchester; A stones throw away from Liverpool and with all the muse and scenery characteristic of the great artistic output and brilliance of resident Jack Hassall. Don't be fooled by mere words of praise. Realize and experience Jack Hassall at the beginning of his invention, penetration and insight not only into the fans and listeners hearts; But also to the rise of a songsmith in all of his original ground breaking art to and for people who love true inspiration.
Band/artist history
Well ... it's a longish story ... I played the cello and recorder (shriek!!) as a small boy in high school. I discovered the electric guitar through my somewhat older nephew, who had moved to Manchester from the USA, and brought a '67 Fender Telecaster with him. Through him, I became exposed to artists such as Sonny Boy Williamson, John Hammond, John Mayall, BB King, Fleetwood Mac (the original one!)and so on. Oh, and Jimi Hendrix too (whoops!). That would have been around 1970. Some years later, I was out playing in clubs (as "the guitar player" in the band) every night. I did this for years and gained a lot of experience from the smallest pubs/clubs to huge concert venues such as the Manchester Apollo and the Hammersmith Odeon, as "the guitar player" - in other words, a sideman. Anyway (ask anybody who's been in "showbiz") ... times changed and I got the blues. I'd always been interested in things "progressive" - i.e. anything that was "new". I was particularly interested in synthesisers in the days when they could only play one note at a time (monophonic!). So naturally there was an inherrent couriosity there when a friend showed me a computer (TRS 80!) but I really wasn't convinced. Some time later, I ended up teaching myself 8088 assembler programing (boy, that was wild!) and wrote a sampler program which let you watch the incoming bitstream, capture it and manipulate it (and save it to disk!). So a lifetime later, here I am on the Internet. It's really changed things and I would say has in fact "democratised" the creation and distribution of music. Without this medium, it's certain that you would never hear any of these tracks, and believe me, there's nothing worse than having music that nobody gets to hear. So your attention is hugely appreciated - thank you very much.
Have you performed in front of an audience?
Not anymore unless invited to sit in on something very cool. I have played live hundreds and hundreds of times, from the smallest pub, to the largest concert venues such as the Hammersmith Odeon in London.
Your musical influences
... from BB King to Badly Drawn Boy and beyond! ... 20hz-20khz - recent influences Roy Patterson (Guitar, Canada), Ulf Wakenius (Guitar, Sweden), Pat Curly (Piano, USA). My roots are in blues and rock: BB King, Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Peter Green, Johnny Winter, Sonny Boy Wiliamson, Albert King, Freddie King, Howling Wolf, Led Zep, Pink Floyd, Free, Yes, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, George Benson, Thomas Dolby, The Eurythmics, Larry Carlton, Lee Ritenour, Ry Cooder, Keith Richards, Chuck Berry, The Eagles, Steely Dan, Jacques Loussier (switched on Bach), King Crimson, Dave Grusin, Tal Farlow, Art Farmer, Jim Hall, Bill Evans, Weather Report, Simply Red (I nearly got the guitar chair, but that's another story!), Badly Drawn Boy, Charlie Parker, Stan Getz, Vaughn Williams, Frank Zappa, Louis Stewart, Peter Almquvist, Ed Banger and the Nosebleeds, Joy Division/New Order, M-People, Martin Hannett, Trevor Horn/Malcom Maclaren (Buffalo Gals), Mozart, Bach, Benoit Mandlebrot and lots of great people I've met on the Internet in the hip-hop/electronica pycho-accoustic scene.
What equipment do you use?
... electric/accoustic guitars, bass, keyboards, harmonica and I'll attempt to incorporate almost anything I can get my hands on into the music if it's appropriate ...
Anything else?
... highlights from GodsOfMusic.com review of Stella Blues and Taxi Dance Revisited. ... I rarely write about music I am wholly unfamiliar with. This is one of those few occasions. The only reason that I picked this artist to begin with was because of the way in which he placed his "signature" in the categories normally used to place the song title and genre in our review request fields. He only placed a sort of smile. I guess I took it for a smirk actually, perhaps his was saying "hey, whatever you want to pick and think is fine by me." I am glad I took his challenge. There is some really nice stuff on this guy's page. Stella Blues in particular was one I found very pleasing. Jack Hassall has some really nice chops. Playing for over thirty years will do that for a guy, I suppose. In this case, Jack draws heavily from the rock and blues roots he was into during the very late 60-70s. That he is from England tends to show in his nods to the Thin Lizzy type of guitar riffs, while a touch of Electric Light Orchestra just graces the idea behind the arrangement and slide guitar work. Add in a tad of the kind of production you might hear from Lindsay Buckingham and you've got a pleasant little piece of music. No vocals on this one, Jack is strictly an instrumentalist it seems. A departure from the rock side of Jack, is the cool breeze jazz of Taxi Dance Revisited. With its George Benson / Larry Carlton influences shining through loud, proud and strong, Jack shows us that he really has sat and learned how to play his music, with articulation and skill. Gotta tell y'all, I really like some of this guy's ideas. There is a lot on Jack's page to admire. Chris K. Pro Critic Radio ________________________________________________ Interview with Jack Hassall (January 21, 2002) Okay, let's plunge into it then. Inspiration is a word commonly used in your biz. What's yours? What artist or music do I find inspiring today, or what or who was it in the beginning that inspired me or how do I "get" inspiration to create music? That's obviously an easy question with a somewhat less easy answer! The first musical artist that inspired me was BB King, the famous blues artist, and even though I'm not black, American and can't sing to save my life, for some reason this didn't seem to matter. I just wanted to play blues guitar in a band. At the same time, guitar players like Peter Green, Johny Winter, Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, Carlos Santana and numerous others were also a huge inspiration for me. Funny enough though, as far as today goes, I would say Badly Drawn Boy is an artist who inspires me because he's done really well, is a nice guy and he lives round the corner from me and he thinks I'm cool! That's inspiring as well, because it's just real. I don't have a problem with being inspired by someone from my own neighborhood! I'd never heard of him, but as I was once again trying to drag myself out of the musical gutter, I ended up doing a remix of one of his songs which I like. That was completely inspiring for a number of reasons, not least the fact that it made me feel a little better about myself! I'd really like to do some other things in the future, however, I'm just an underground puke and he's a famous pop star, but none the less, the experience - and dare I say "peer review" - was very inspiring and encouraged me enormously, even though what he does and what I do are as different as chalk and cheese. As for what inspires and motivates me in the creation of my music, it isn't the money, fame or adulation - I certainly have none of that! I guess mechanically, for any given song, inspiration could come from just strumming an acoustic guitar or messing around on a keyboard. When I was in "real" bands with other musicians, inspiration could come by jamming. However, I really think that sometimes I do make life really hard for myself because I'm something of a musical "purist" as well being a perfectionist. I never consciously plagiarize other artists' work by saying "Oh, I'll just do something like that." That would be a quite easy for me to do, but it certainly wouldn't be genuine. Even if you're crazy enough to take this approach, people will always say it sounds like this or it reminds me of that. That's fair enough. It's just a human thing, but only I know if I deliberately did that kind of thing, but to me, it defeats the purpose of developing your own musical individuality. In fact, one of the reasons that Badly thought what I'd done on the remix was cool was that I did it blind by deliberately ignoring his original rendition which I'd only heard once. So just about anything can give me inspiration and I guess that's probably the same for just about anybody involved in creative endeavors of any kind. Who's your favorite Beatle? (Yoko does count) I would have to say John Lennon if forced into a corner. Like many of us baby-boomers, I grew up listening to the Beatles and the Stones on my little mono radio. Liverpool is only about 30 minutes away from Manchester and the River Mersey goes right past my house and of course, I did hundreds of gigs with cover bands where you had to play Beatles tunes. They were very special and still are in my book but I really liked Lennon's music, lyrics, poetry and in particular, his attitude. What sort of tools do you work with to create your music? Well, I started playing over 30 years ago although I don't count myself as a virtuoso guitar player, so the tools I use to create music depend on what period you are referring to. The guitar was always there, because that's my main instrument. Casio brought out a pocket calculator in the 80's which had a little piano keyboard on it. The whole thing was less than six inches long. I had two of them cello taped to a cigarette packet and wrote a 7 minute song with them. I couldn't afford any equipment for the longest time so improvisation was always the key. I was also the lunatic that taught himself computer machine code and built my own audio sampler in 1984 because I couldn't even afford a drum machine. I guess that's why they call it the blues. About 10 years ago I had a 4 track cassette portastudio and an Emulator III which I've still got but it's almost dead. Today I have a nice brand new Yamaha 16 track Hard Disk recorder with automated faders and the whole nine yards. About a year ago I got a PC with a Soundblaster soundcard. I only use the EIII as a midi keyboard and use the soundcard and a bunch of stock samples that you get with it. So it's all a lot better now than it's ever been and by using both the PC and the 16 track together I hope that I'm making significant improvements in just about every area of my humble efforts. I generally use Cubase VST/32 as a midi sequencer and synchronization source for the 16 track although I recently bought some software that lets you make music without playing a note, but alas all the samples are at 140 bpm and all in the key of A minor. It's great if you want to do pure archetypal dance music, and there a real lot of non-musicians on MP3.com that use it and that's great because music is a good thing in itself. If I wanted to do an electro dance album, I could probably make one in a much quicker time frame than would otherwise be the case, but that's what everybody else does - and over time, it will become as obsolete as the technology enabling it. What did you think of Nirvana and the alternative bands? You strike me as a sort of a classic-rock kinda guy. Well, I suppose you're right but as I mentioned, my roots are in the Blues, as Rock was a pretty new thing in the very late 60's. Interestingly, this type of music was called underground at the time and later progressive, for example, "The Progressive Blues Experiment" by Johnny Winter. This turned into Rock and many years later Classic Rock. So it's a function of time that's all. I thought that Nirvana was excellent, and maybe in another 10 years that will be called Classic Grunge or something. As for the word "Alternative", to me, it means an alternative to stuff like The Spice Girls or Donny Osmond or whatever is in the mainstream, although today, I guess you mean Linkin Park and Staind (both of which I like). I do think that the term is somewhat overloaded though. I ended up having to pick "Alternative" as the "master genre" to describe what I do because there's no genre called "eclectic" on MP3.com and it's not "Jazz" or "Country and Western" and I thought "easy listening" was far too unhip and even if there was, I guess that one day this would end up as "Classic Eclectic"! Your music is sort of eclectic. Yes, and this has become blazingly apparent to me after having put together the album and caused me an enormous amount of angst at the same time. I guess it's just a reflection of the number of years I've been listening and playing music. However, if nothing else, it is genuine and many people have said that the diversity is good. Well I'm glad about that because I just do what I do. There are a number of tracks that don't even have the guitar at all, which is weird if your primary instrument is the guitar, but I'm not trying to show-off. I grew out of that a long time ago and I'm interested in having a body of work which consists of interesting and individual pieces created within my limitations. There are lots of people who are much better than me at guitar based instrumental music - Lee Ritnour and Larry Carlton and numerous other clones spring to mind - and I'm not sure that there's anything I could really add to that type of thing. I could have done that and made everything sound "the same" and stuck it in "Jazz", but it's just not what I do. Interestingly though, the electronic computer type tracks seem to be quite popular with the Electronic/Trance/Ambient listeners and a couple of tracks classified as "Jazz-Fusion" seem to have been accepted as well. So yes, I would agree on the term "eclectic" but it doesn't seem to be anything negative at all, but it certainly did surprise me! Least favorite musician of all time? Oh, there's more than one! Probably anybody who ever fired me from a gig - and if you've never been fired from a band you haven't lived! Musically though, it has to be the saxophone playing clown with the big red nose who was famous in the UK in those circus shows. So when I say "clown" I do mean literally - pointy hat, big red note, big shoes, the whole bit. His name was Charlie Coroli and when he blew that horn he was so out of tune that hairs would stand up on the back of my neck. I guess that nobody outside of the UK ever heard old Charlie but if you ever need to insult a British saxophone player, just utter the words "Charlie Coroli" and watch them shudder. If that doesn't work say "so why the big red nose?". Who should be the next 007? Oh, definitely me! I'm British and nobody has ever heard of me. That's definitely a good cover for someone on Her Majesty's Secret Service! And finally, tell us a bit about yourself. Well I think I already did that but I would hope that the music might speak for me in some way or another. I'm 45, 5 feet 8 inches tall, I have a beard because now I've got a double chin and I'm about 30 pounds overweight because I party for my country.
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