Jon Hopkins

Long overdue, this thread, and fully deserved. I think Dog Latin got me hooked on the Creosote album, but I am equally falling in love with the new one.

Agree with Nick that "it goes somewhere very beautiful". It starts quite Kompakt-y to my ears, but then unravels into a mystic trip.

kinda put off when i read about parts being uptempo - i'm not that into the the 2013 "intelligent banger" thing - but maybe i'm wronging it with that preconception.

So, is this just Nathan Fake 2013? Not saying that as a jab, but seriously asking.

I like it much more than I ever did Nathan Fake, who I never really got.

Dunno yet what this is the 2013 of, but I'm enjoying it.

Immunity sounds like a cross between clark and múm.

into this. love all the door-based percussion sounds.

love this video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q04ILDXe3QE

The second half of this, the ambient bit, is way better than the first half. Can't believe anyone is still getting praise for knocking out Sky Was Pink rips in 2013.

Kinda found myself wishing he'd stretch himself a bit more melodically as well - yeah, you can write a tinkly two-bar melody, we get it.

i'm fine with where he is

Was about halfway thru the new one and read an article about how he stopped using the Eventide H3000 harmonized for the most part because it sounded too much like Eno. So I went back to the last record and am enjoying it more. :-)

Agree the first half is very mid-2000s Kompakt/Border Community in tone, which isn't necessarily a bad thing but it doesn't really feel like it's trying to be anything more than that. The ambient and piano bits are nice enough but they make me want to go back and listen to the vignettes on Diamond Mine in which they were put to startling use as juxtaposed beside KC's dreich balladry.

Cool piece on the KC collab in The Quietus:

http://thequietus.com/articles/05976-king-creosote-jon-hopkins-diamond-mine-interview

This KC record sounds to me like a mash up of Sufjan Stevens, the Lord of the Rings OST and "Dunwich Beach, 1960" btw.

Scratch that -- not Sufjan, Gorky's.

I like a Sky Was Pink rip if it's done well, so this gets a pass. There's enough interesting details going on underneath that it's not as sterile and clean as, say, Stephan Bodzin (for want of a relevant comparison in 2013).

The ambient half I think is all the better for coming after the dancefloor IDM, really emphasises the sense of stillness and delicacy in "Abandon Window." I'm not sure why the James Holden album, solid as it is, is getting all the acclaim while this seems to be barely noticed.

"abandon window" is gorgeous, as is "sun harmonics"

I have to confess, I'd happily condemn Hopkins 'n' Creosote to a life time of making versions/continuations of "Diamond Mine" ...

The Holden album is getting more buzz because it's way better, but this is hardly going under the radar either.

I must just be reading the wrong things.

They are making a film of Meg Rosoff's How I Live Now (!) and Jon Hopkins and Bat for Lashes have done this for it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6ZV_pZZ_V8&feature=player_embedded

Not as instantly loveable as the Purity Ring one, but may be a grower...

"breathe this air" is better w/o purity ring... or maybe i was just too used to the album version

That track was my favourite off the album, and the fact that Purity Ring picked it out as well just made it all the more perfect. I'm a goner for Megan James vocals on anything, tho.

what an incredibly boring album this is. and yes it is literally a wallpaper version of music people were doing eight years ago. gtfo with being excited about it, mercury judgezzzz

otoh the mercury has brought holden's album to my attention and that's loads better than i expected

i have only heard one track from the holden album and didn't really like it at all (and also didn't get why it's been such a constant comparison pt to the hopkins one). maybe i should listen to it in full? meanwhile i really love the hopkins album *shrug*

On meeting him at the Mercury launch last night I was surprised to discover Hopkins looks like a model. Had imagined him as a beard and cardie type.

ha. i dunno, he strikes me more as a handsome-for-a-nerd type, in the brian cox mould.

sort of Brian cox meets jonny greenwood

I have to confess, I'd happily condemn Hopkins 'n' Creosote to a life time of making versions/continuations of "Diamond Mine" ...

Likewise.

This is an excellent album, gets very absorbing very quickly.

I have to confess, I'd happily condemn Hopkins 'n' Creosote to a life time of making versions/continuations of "Diamond Mine" ...

They did a song called Circle My Demise a few years ago, it's really gorgeous.

I like the JH album, though not to the point of vigorously defending it

I like Immunity well enough although I find I'm hitting his FACT mix more often. I think Hopkins' greatest strength lies in his reassembling of existing material.

http://www.factmag.com/2013/06/24/fact-mix-388-jon-hopkins

Essential Mix from November last year (without interruptions):

https://soundcloud.com/jonhopkins/essential-mix-221114

And news of a Late Night Tales mix:

http://www.clashmusic.com/news/jon-hopkins-to-steer-late-night-tales-mix

http://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=22&v=t-w-XSbVDsI

with this and the last track he premiered i feel like he might be trying to wring too much out of a narrow range of ideas lately

or perhaps he was always this limited and i just failed to notice until now

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/04/30/an-electronic-soundtrack-for-spiritual-awakening

New Yorker writer Kelefa Sanneh loves Jon Hopkins:

Hopkins is now thirty-eight, and one of the most celebrated electronic musicians of his generation. He has a paradoxical ability to make obsessively engineered tracks that sound friendly and generous; his sensibility is openhearted and sometimes sentimental—an approach that can make him seem like an outlier in the world of electronic music. ...Next month, he will release “Singularity,” ending a quiet but dramatic period in his life, during which he recovered from the rigors of touring by subjecting his body to other kinds of stress: desert treks, controlled breathing, freezing baths. Apparently, these exertions had an effect, because the new album is both the gentlest and the most epic of Hopkins’s career.

“Singularity” is an hour-long ode to spiritual transcendence that also resembles pleasant background noise—at least, it does at first.

and the most epic of Hopkins’s career.

Certainly does have a ton of huge buildup tracks on it. And it's a nice record, too.

one of the most celebrated electronic musicians of his generation

huh did not realise this

Don’t think that’s overstating things, he’s a pretty high profile guy. I mean not David Guetta fame or anything but similar to a guy like Nils Frahm.

Celebrated by those already in the know...I had barely heard of the guy

the new record is like immunity pt 2 (saying that in the most positive way possible)

great interview w him here - https://noisey.vice.com/en_uk/article/7xdyzd/jon-hopkins-wants-to-take-you-on-a-blissed-out-trip

Enjoyed the RA feature on his gear & process

Yeah

Man this album is emotionally resonant

Damn

Saw most of his set last night, was pretty cool!

Seeing him in a week. Anything notable? Should be fun seeing him as a headliner - last time I saw him he opened for Royksopp if I remember right

Hmm, notable? I guess it was more aggressive than what I was expecting, and he was a lot more active. Setting tempos and triggering in real time, that sort of thing. He was very busy. Daniel Avery's techno-heavy DJ set beforehand was pretty great, too.

new album is more aggressive than the last one too, or are you meaning even more than that

hopkins is a lot like clark too it seems..

xpost Hmm, he did start with pretty much the first few tracks from the new album, I think. But something about it seemed much more in your face, made for dancing and not introspection. Maybe it was simply a matter of volume!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3G4kCi_ldr8

New album Music for Psychedelic Therapy' out today.

I haven't been able to test out its suitability for ketamine or other nostrums.

To ensure the album was fit for purpose, Hopkins listened back to it several times after taking ketamine, a dissociative anaesthetic sometimes used in psychedelic therapy. “Ketamine, for me, has always had an extraordinary synergy with music, particularly electronic and devotional music,” he says. “Maybe three months before mastering, when the album was starting to form as a complete thing, I would have a ketamine session and just lie there and return with notes on what was good and what was not good. It was my mind exploring tool. I almost called the album ‘Music for Ketamine Therapy’, which would be getting ridiculously niche, but for me that’s what it’s best suited for.”

When you do a deep listen, on a medicine, with a reasonable volume, it becomes a very emotionally intense thing,” says Hopkins. “But I think even a sober listener, listening at a decent volume, doing nothing else, will be taken somewhere.” He recommends listening to the album in a single sitting, lying down in the dark. “It asks something different of the listener because of the time scale it operates over,” he says. “Longform music is an incredible thing, and I like the idea of reacting to decreasing attention spans by making things that ask a little bit more, but hopefully give more as well.”

However listeners end up experiencing this album, Hopkins believes further research into the potential of psychedelic therapy can only benefit humanity as a species – particularly if it encourages us all to listen a little harder to what those plants are trying to tell us. “I see it as a protection method the Earth has got,” he says. “You can eat a psilocybin mushroom from the ground, and it teaches you a lesson about the importance of the ecosystem that generated that very mushroom. The message is right there, so it’s kind of impossible to ignore.”

I'm going to listen to it a bit more before commenting, but so far I like the combination of drone-y sections with nature sounds and gentle but insistent pulsing electronic elements.

I'm kind of confused as to what Hopkins is or is trying to be. On one hand he writes intimate songs with King Creosote but on the other dancey, processed head-bobby electronica for the kids? Then he plays spacey piano soundtrack-y stuff with nature sound ambient stuff? I appreciate that he has diverse interests, but other than the odd moment or melody, I have a hard time finding his center and a lot of it kind of washes over me.

I’d guess this is more of a personal project and one-off within his own work.

I don't know, to me he mostly stays in the triangle between ambient/soundtrack, IDM and minimal house/techno, like a lot of other producers. The King Creosote record I thought was mostly a production job?

I think Hopkins consistently produces good stuff but I also find it hard to get super excited about him.

I think Hopkins consistently produces good stuff but I also find it hard to get super excited about him.

― Siegbran

This is where I am with him. He’s very capable as a producer and composer but I can’t seem to click with his thing.

Started hearing this new one yesterday and got super bored, skipped ahead and it was more of the same thing… I guess it serves a very specific purpose.

the correct soundtrack for ketamine "therapy" is mid-90s happy hardcore compilation CDs at mind melting volume, i like this dude's big budget new age-tronica but cmon

I've no experience of ketamine at all, but I was intrigued by an episode in the last series of High Maintenance where someone uses/abuses a ketamine nasal spray.- which is apparently a real treatment for depression. That looked like it could be fun to do with this soundtrack.

mushrooms are not plants, jesus christ

closer to getting high from eating the eye boogers of a rotting hyena

nature, ecology and psychedelic experience are both super dope but not taking advice from anybody who can’t tell the six kingdoms apart lol

Ram Dass track was suprisingly beautiful. Not sure if it really benefits from repeat listens but as a one off I was surprised by how well it did. Then again, one of my favourite BOC tracks has that cheesy porn monologue in it so maybe this will continue to hold up as well?

Belatedly reporting back that the only part I like of this is the 'excerpt' - I have difficulty finding any interest in the rest of it.

I'm sure he's super sincere, but this is so credulous:

“You can eat a psilocybin mushroom from the ground, and it teaches you a lesson about the importance of the ecosystem that generated that very mushroom. The message is right there, so it’s kind of impossible to ignore.”

Err.. do you have a theory about Hemlock, or even Tobacco?

Hemlock is poisonous in toto, and is mostly used for pulpwood.

Tobacco must be cured before consumption.

What he's saying is a bit hippie-ish, yes, but it's also true to a certain extent-- a tiny mushroom can make you see God.