Spiritual liberation, profound ceremony, journey as inspiration, primal energy: we aren’t in Kansas any more but in Jon Hopkins’s hotel bedroom somewhere else in the world.
The English musician and producer was once an ad-hoc assistant to Brian Eno, David Holmes and Coldplay, among others, but for the past 20 years he has also been releasing solo albums that are the epitome of immersive electronic experiences.
Chris Martin once said that if Hopkins had been a classical musician and composer in the 18th or 19th century he would have been the talk of Europe’s palaces. Is he in some ways a musician out of time? “I think I’m here very specifically at this time making what I make for whoever is listening to it now. Mind you, that’s a great quote from Chris.”
Music was always on the go for Hopkins: in his house, in his head and, from the age of 12, in his hands: he started to study piano as a junior at the Royal College of Music in London. During his five years there he won a competition to perform Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G. A career as a professional pianist was mooted, but Hopkins had become thoroughly enamoured with acid house, grunge, hardcore and electronica groups such as Seefeel and Plaid.
He used piano-contest prize money to buy a Roland synthesiser, and by the age of 18 he had started to perform with various musicians. Before he was 20 he had signed a low-budget record deal – but after releasing two solo albums, the underperforming Opalescent and Contact Note, he realised that the life of a commercially ambitious musician, with its accompanying record-label pressure, wasn’t for him.
Cue a move into music production, working with Eno on projects that included Coldplay’s 2008 album, Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends. What was initially an invitation to spend a day in the studio turned into a year; he was subsequently asked to be the support-act DJ for the album’s accompanying tour.
The 45-year-old comes across as such a genteel guy that it’s hard to imagine he would like such loud stadium experiences. “Yeah, the level of spectacle ...” he says with a slight shake of his head. “I love attending those things as long as I don’t have to do anything at them myself. It’s a whole new art form in a way.
“What I love about the Coldplay shows is that you don’t go to their shows for restraint. They have found this brilliant way of doing such tours, where they’re all enjoying it and where the schedule is not crazy, in that there are long gaps between bouts of intense touring.
After show number 150 or whatever, and you’re playing the same songs and trying to find new ways of playing them, it started to feel fairly gruelling
“From my experience, they ensure the system runs smoothly. I look back on my years of playing a lot of shows every week with them, and there are great moments and memories. Their shows are very inclusive, mad, beautiful events, and their primary messages are all things I resonate with massively and, in my own way, I’m doing.”
Hopkins has tentatively returned to making music for himself. “To me there’s never really been any barrier, never been a choice, between the music I’m making and who I am. That has just always been the way it is, and so you surrender to it, are at the mercy of it and quite enjoy it.”
He says that his 2018 album, Singularity, was “probably my most digestible mainstreamish album. If you look at that particular one, it was a reflection of commercial experiences I’d had while performing my previous album, Immunity, which was very successful, and of wanting to bring a large show to people and to make it as good as I could.”
Hopkins pronounces “digestible” and “commercial experiences” in a raised-eyebrows manner, part surprise, part shrug. Wealth and fame have never been among his ambitions. “When I made Singularity I wasn’t feeling commodified. I was definitely feeling a lot of pressure, but I was still making music I loved, music I believed in.
“Lengthy instrumental tracks on the album, such as Everything Connected and Luminous Beings, each of which is over 10 minutes, are not exactly chart-friendly – although it got into the UK top 10, which was quite fun.
“It started to feel more commodified, perhaps, when I found myself saying yes to so many shows. I’m very grateful I had the opportunity to do that, for lots of reasons, but after show number 150 or whatever, and you’re playing the same songs and trying to find new ways of playing them, it started to feel fairly gruelling.
“Generally, I wasn’t seeking to be a performer in life at all. My real love is in writing music, but then I found a way of making the performances work and in a way fell into that. I know some musicians who say it all makes sense to them when they’re on stage. For me, the equivalent of that is when I’m writing: that’s what makes sense of being alive; that’s what my purpose feels like.”
The big shows and big audiences that accompanied Singularity’s success caused the heebie-jeebies to return, so Hopkins again reverted to “looking very much inwards” – which, he implies, is where Music for Psychedelic Therapy, his 2021 album, came from. It is, he says, “the absolute representation of who I am now, what I’m interested in, what my inner world is like.
“But also I feel it’s more about a general mood ... It’s not a normal album; it doesn’t sound like one. Again, inconvenient as it is, I don’t get control over that; it just has to be embraced.”
Which brings us to his new album, Ritual. If Music for Psychedelic Therapy references Rainbow Dome Musick, the spiritually soaked, post-drug-comedown 1979 album by Steve Hillage, Ritual is more clinically sleek and forward-looking. Hopkins calls it “a kinetic counterpart” to Music for Psychedelic Therapy.
“I spent ages trying to work out what two words you would use if you had to describe Ritual as something or to someone. At one point I was, like, is it an electronic symphony? Yes, it has strong elements of ambient, it has shamanic drumming, it’s got piano sections, but I know it’s not in a genre that I can easily label. I’m not saying it’s a new art form, but it’s more a case of retrospectively calling it something.”
Ritual is a sublime piece of work, an ambient mix in a darkened room that could be used, Hopkins says, to guide people during psychoactive drug experiences undertaken “not for recreational purposes but for self-development or recovery”. He isn’t being prescriptive about how to use the music, he says. Ritual is there “to progress a form, a blueprint going forward”.
Hopkins laughs at what he has just said. “My managers keep saying, ‘Oh, this has huge potential,’ and while I’d like to imagine Ritual as the beginning of something, like a seed planted, it doesn’t compare to previous work.”
That has to be celebrated, right? “It’s the purest thing,” he replies. “There are no attempts with it to make something that’s part of current popular culture, and there are no nods whatsoever to dance music. I feel that I’ve dropped all attempts to fit into anything. And, yeah, while there are consequences commercially, who gives a shit?”
“I’m going to be working on things behind the scenes with other people who are far more in tune with what is actually being listened to ... What I make is never mainstream, but shifting away from what audiences expect is part of the process. Who knows what I’ll make next? That’s all part of the fun.”
Ritual is released by Domino Records on Friday, August 30th
