| Aka/Darbari/Java: Magic Realism | ||||
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| Studio album by | ||||
| Released | 1983 | |||
| Recorded | 1982 | |||
| Studios | Grant Avenue Studios, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada | |||
| Genres | World, ambient | |||
| Length | 44:10 | |||
| Label | Editions EG EGED 31 | |||
| Producers | Jon Hassell, Daniel Lanois | |||
| Jon Hassell chronology | ||||
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Aka/Darbari/Java: Magic Realism is a 1983 album by American trumpet player and composer Jon Hassell, released on the label Editions EG. It was co-produced by Daniel Lanois and features Abdou M'Boup on drums.
The album features Hassell manipulating and looping fragments of sampled sound. In the liner notes, Hassell describes the album as "a proposal for a 'coffee-colored' classical music of the future."
The cover painting is by Mati Klarwein.
| Review scores | |
|---|---|
| Source | Rating |
| AllMusic |   |
| The Village Voice | A− |
AllMusic's Brian Olewnick described the album as "an insinuating blend of early-'80s high tech with ancient Southeast Asia," calling it "an early high-water mark at the juncture between world and ambient musics." For The Village Voice, Robert Christgau called it "dandy background music--more fluid and organic than Dream Theory in Malaya if also more amorphous than his first Eno collaboration."
In his 1995 book Ocean of Sound, David Toop writes that on Aka/Darbari/Java "the perfume of ethnopoetics was supplemented by parallels with literature and the advanced technology of hyperreality."
All tracks composed by Jon Hassell unless otherwise noted.
