Jon Hopkins: No Comfort Without Discomfort

Jon Hopkins’s music seems to have a life of its own. Even if you’ve heard one of his tracks a dozen times, you’re bound to notice something new the next time you listen. The complexity of his pieces, which are often constructed from hundreds of individual layers, make for a genuinely unique experience each and every time you play one back.

Almost 25 years since his first album was released, his methods and his music continue to evolve. On Insides (2009), Immunity (2013) and Singularity (2018), Hopkins presented a clash between two immense forces – the wild, abrasive energy of tracks like “Colour Eye” and “Open Eye Signal,” followed by the gently restorative effect of pieces like “Abandon Window” and “Recovery.”

In the years since Singularity, a growing interest in psychedelic experiences (and other mind-altering states) has led Hopkins to focus on the therapeutic potential of his work, most explicitly with 2021’s Music for Psychedelic Therapy. His latest LP, Ritual, is a 41-minute musical ceremony intended to be listened to as a single piece.

I visited Hopkins at his studio in Hackney to talk about the album, his favorite instruments and software, and the ways he uses Ableton Live.

Could you talk a little bit about the concept behind Ritual, and how the album came together?

The origins of the piece are in an installation called Dreamachine from back in 2022, which involved 30 or so people at a time lying down surrounded by fully immersive audio – 50 or 60 channels, I think. Stroboscopic lights were stationed above each person, flashing at different speeds to exploit this thing called the flicker effect, which essentially causes an alpha wave state in the brain. It’s similar to daydreaming and meditation, and it can cause quite far-out visions, almost like psychedelic experiences but without having to take anything. I was very happy to be asked to do that.

The piece of music that came out of that, by necessity, had to be quite warm and accessible. So I had this really nice ambient piece, but then the next year I just felt this desire to reopen the session to see if there was anything in there that could be expanded upon and made into an album. I called up my friend Dan [Kijowski], who’s a major collaborator on the album under the name 7RAYS, and he came and we sat and listened to bits, and he helped me figure out which things were seeds for new ideas and which things didn’t work. There were elements that I took out, because obviously it had to work on its own with no visuals of any kind.

We just started to jam with it, really. I gave him some stems, and he went off with Ishq [Matt Hillier], and they just set up all these analog synths and generated loads of amazing stuff – hours and hours of material – and sent it back to me.

One thing I'm quite good at is quickly being able to tell whether there are seeds hidden in these parts or not. So I went through things very quickly, and we were able to hone in on those seeds that seemed to make sense. I’d send them back suggestions or requests for more specifics, and we’d get more and more precise until it started really growing into what you hear now.

And was there a concept behind the album from the beginning?

Well, I never know that in advance of making something. I just follow a thread intuitively until it's finished. It’s really only clear to me what the concept is when I have to start gearing up to talk about it in this language, rather than that language – which I always wish I didn't have to do at first, but then later on, as I figure out how to better verbalise things, I get enthused.

The interviews have been interesting, because when you write this kind of music you're not getting frivolous interviews as a rule. It's such niche music, you know? It's not like these are bangers. It's not pop music, it's quite deep-dive type stuff. I like the idea of the information being out there, but only for those who are really curious. If people seek out the interview we're doing today, they can learn about this stuff, but really, most people will just listen and receive it on a felt level, which is great. So anyway, I got quite into talking about it, and Dan and I realized that it sounds like a ritual of some kind. And towards the end of the process, we even started incorporating ritual sounds, like candles being lit.

So much of the listening experience is subjective, I guess. Not only do people not necessarily know what the sounds are, but the sounds that come to the foreground change depending on when you’re listening to it and your state of mind. I notice this with all of your albums – every listen is slightly different, and you discover something new each time.

Yeah, I mean there’s so much detail in all of it. I'm never really trying to make it that way, but that's just how the ideas come, and they sound right. There's a lot of muting that takes place as well, and I've got much better at taking things out to leave space, actually. But I love working on the minutiae, and having things that are there for the deeper listener. That’s how you achieve musical longevity.

Sometimes, if I haven't listened back to something I've done for years, I forget, and I'm like “what the fuck is that sound?”, because I don't work in a straightforward, logical way at all. I work on a very intuitive level, and I’ll often consolidate sounds and print things, and won't then even have the original unprinted version. So I can't explain how most of them even exist. I think that's quite fun, to be honest.

You’ve been hosting these listening experiences recently, which are designed to take people on a journey from one state of mind to another. How do you see that journey progressing throughout the piece? Is it meant to reflect a kind of psychedelic experience, like previous albums?

The narrative means something in particular to me, but I’ve chosen not to say what that is because it might affect how people hear it. But it definitely has the arc of the classic “Hero's Journey”. The early section is illusory, with this false sense of security, and then it gradually gets more serious, and then it comes to what feels like the brink of insanity and collapse, where the tension just could not build anymore. And then it's triumph, and then disillusion and integration, and then rebirth. So that's the arc of it. That wasn't done particularly consciously, but I think I do that in a lot of albums in a lot of ways, over the years. Even back to my second album, there was an element of that towards the end.

But yeah, it's interesting looking at this session now, because I don't think the track markers are even in there. I think what we did was we made everything in this session, printed it, and then decided where the track markers were afterwards. So in no sense was it written as eight tracks. It was only ever written as one, and then just cut into eight for contractual reasons. Otherwise, it isn't technically an album, according to the record labels!

It’s better that it's in parts, because realistically lots of people don't listen to the whole thing, and it gives you an opportunity to name the chapters and provide a nice bit of structure. People who are serious about it will listen to it all anyway, and of course there’s gapless playback on all the main streaming platforms.

And what kinds of reactions do you observe during these sessions?

Well, I’m not really in there, because I think if people see me there it can affect it and create a weird dynamic. And it’s closer to a screening than a performance, though it isn’t really that either, because it’s in the most extraordinary immersive audio and there’s nothing to look at. We made it so that there’s some very gentle lighting and some haze, but there’s nothing to look at, so people are kind of guided to closing their eyes.

For me, it's a very kinetic piece, and my dream is to have these outdoor versions with just stacks of PAs and people in a circle. And maybe people would be more likely to move and dance and freak out. But for these sessions, they're all sitting generally or lying or in a yoga pose, and there's a lot of crying, and a lot of breath work. I think we've done a few, the Berlin one and the Amsterdam ones, and the London ones, the later at the ICA. We did quite a lot there, like seven or eight, but during one of the Saturday evening ones there were definitely some people tripping, and there was way more energy in the room after that than any of the others. There was a sort of looseness and an openness. And I think if you listen while in some state of altered consciousness it has this whole other layer that reveals itself. So it’s a shame that this next one is on a Monday night!

Let’s talk a bit about the technical side of the piece. How many different layers did you end up using for it?

There are 383. There were 440 at the peak, but we simplified it down. There are groups for all of the instrument sections rather than per track, but the intro is all one group. So within there are many more layers of groupings. 

With all the stuff that Matt [Ishq] did, he couldn't tell you where it comes from, because he has this vast sample library and over the years he's been collecting samples without really knowing why. At some point in his life he's owned almost every synth that's been available. He’d buy one, record loads of stuff, and then sell it on. And this sound would be an example of that.

He loves a lot of the more obscure Korg synths, like the Kronos, and the Z1 has some weird stuff going on in it.

And is this just the sample here that we’re listening to, or is there processing that you've done as well?

Oh, there’ll be fucking loads of processing on that, but I've printed that in. At this point it's just being EQed. What that’s doing is kind of keeping this a bit more sensible.

But yeah, I probably dropped the pitch an octave on that and probably would have put it into Altiverb with the Great Pyramid reverb, because for some reason Egypt was on my mind a lot when I was making this album.

It’s extraordinary. You could just listen to these two tracks and they’d be an entire piece by themselves.

Yeah, these stems are interesting just on their own. I’ve been using Altiverb ever since Immunity, and here I’m using the Golgumbaz reverb, which is based on this mausoleum in India. It has a strange, mood-altering effect immediately, these sounds that Matt did. All of it does, to a degree.

With these bells, when you add in Matt’s sound, you see that they’re all unified together, even though they’re all stems, they’re all forming one sound picture, or a place that you’re in the middle of. All of these Altiverb reverbs are so immersive. I’ll be listening to a sound coming out of my speakers but I’d swear it’s coming from really far away.

How do you know when you've created enough of a soundscape? Is it just pure instinct telling you when you don’t need to add anything else?

Just when it’s good! It’s literally that. “Fuck around until it sounds good” is the general ethos. It’s an intuitive thing.

Where’s the bass sound here coming from?

It comes from my piano. Organic bass is really important. I think sometimes there's nothing a synth can offer when it comes to the low end.

You often use your upright piano in your pieces, and especially towards the end of your albums where it feels like you’re welcoming the listener home after a difficult journey.

Yeah, that’s exactly it. For me, that upright piano, the Yamaha, is like home, and has been since 1989. It was in my other studio in Bow, and now it’s here, where I imagine it’ll never leave. What’s interesting is that the strings have degraded over the years, in a charming way, so the low end doesn't sound that great anymore. The last time the low end sounded great was on “Sit Around the Fire” [from Music for Psychedelic Therapy]. That was almost like the swansong of those lower strings. Now only the middle section of the keyboard still sounds great. The top end’s getting a bit wonky, and my piano tuner said there’s not really much you can do about that. You’ve either got to replace all the strings or just live with it like this, and maybe celebrate how the degradation affects the sound in a positive way. So when I need a clean sound, I go somewhere else.

These lighter sounds are fun. The idea is that Vylana is lighting things, and it might be that the first couple of times she’s lighting a candle off to each side, but then the third time it triggers something more than she expected. They’re all in different places, and then with the last one all this stuff is triggered.

I must have used Ableton’s Reverb here. I use it all the time – it’s very cosmic. I don’t use it when I want a real-sounding reverb, I usually use it when I want a massive spacey thing, and I like the way it produces some unusual held resonances. So I print the reverb in, and drop the pitch an octave. And then maybe put another one on and print it again. Complex is the [warping] algorithm I use most often. I use Complex Pro only if I need formants to be filled. Generally, for something like sound design, like this, I try to avoid stretching if I can. If it’s not necessary, then I’ll just take Warp off.

People don't traditionally bother doing this, but I and all the English collaborators recorded ourselves in this room with some surround mics around, and just kind of moved and shuffled around, trying to essentially capture some life, and the energy of the people that made this thing.

It reminds me of drifting off to sleep, or having a nap, but there's someone in the next room moving things around. It's very comforting.

It's nice, yeah. I don't know where this idea comes from, but I’ve been doing things like this for years. For this track called “Heron,” this very niche James Yorke cover from 2009, I was in an old studio, and in the kitchen next to my room Cherif [Hashizume] was actually washing up. And you can hear him doing the dishes on the track. I was actually recording the piano, but it sounded so comforting, because those are the sorts of sounds we grow up hearing. I started not just trying to not have them there, but actually celebrating them being there and making them a feature. So now I consciously do that all the time.

After the intro, it moves into the more “normal” section, kind of the red herring section.

Red herring?

Yeah, because it just makes you think maybe we’re in for a normal ambient album. You’ve got to present the normal before the extreme. If you go in with extreme, it will not be extreme. There’s no comfort without discomfort, and vice versa. It’s actually my favourite section, to be honest, because I like an easy life. And this track is almost exclusively the Moog One.

All of these are dotted around the stereo field, right?

Exactly, and when we were mixing in Atmos it was incredible. You can literally do everything imaginable. I do Atmos right at the end, and it’s really important for me to do it only at that point. It’s very important for me not to think beyond stereo, because you’re producing an immersive thing anyway in stereo, and then it’s just a case of translating that to Atmos once it’s been done, that’s how it works. I don’t need to be sending things behind me when I’m writing. There’s a lot of that happening here – many, many layers of sounds joining to form one sound picture.

There’s something beautiful about that vocal’s feminine energy.

It’s interesting you mention that, because that’s what was so missing from it. A lot of women worked on the album as well, but there’s a kind of strong “male” energy to the machine-like components that dominate a lot of it. The string section and vocal section have this feminine energy, and the synth section is more “male.” The air and love and life that was brought to it by Vylana in particular, but also Emma and Daisy, is vital to it working. It was unbalanced, I’d say, when it was all just electronic.

With all of this, you can see it’s kind of fractal. You can go into layers upon layers that go together. It’s quite nice to just listen to by itself.

What’s this clip here, “Badalamenti Bridge”?

In the Twin Peaks score and in a lot of Angelo Badalamenti’s other David Lynch scores, he gets his string players to play on the bridge, quite often on a double bass often. And I just love that sound.

And I’m putting this sound into this combo, which I use a lot. I use this [Live’s Delay plugin] as a pre-delay which I can control separately, 100% wet with no feedback, because the 250 ms in Ableton’s Reverb isn’t a lot when you’ve got 60 seconds of reverb. So Reverb provides the cosmic space and depth, and Altiverb provides the organic side. For the Altiverb side I’m using the King’s Chamber of the Great Pyramid, usually with not such a long reverb time. It just gives this fresh and unusual feeling.

There’s a sound here I want to highlight, because it’s very interesting. We called them portals, because that’s kind of how they operate in the album. This sound itself is kind of shit. Like, what is it? You don’t know. It’s some kind of random synth that Matt sent. I mean, it’s not actually shit, it’s interesting – but what’s it doing there? The point is that when you first hear it, you’re like “what the fuck is that?” 

The portals appear three or four different times, I think, and with the second one, a bit more happens. It’s a bit like that thing with the lighter at the beginning where you have something unexpected triggering the sound.

It’s quite an unsettling sound.

Yeah, and it’s supposed to be. And underneath that comes all of these different delays. I’m always trying to create this feeling that you’re hearing one sound because something else has happened, like there’s an inextricable logic to this happening because it’s like a story. The last time the portal happens is right at the climax of the piece.

And this one here is a Prophecy, a really classic old ‘90s synth, with this cello or violin playing at quarter speed.

The entrance of the drums comes as a bit of a shock, because as you say you’ve been lulled into thinking this is going to be a nice, smooth, gentle album and suddenly this thing whacks you around the head.

Exactly. Dan was using the Cirklon sequencer, which essentially encourages or allows you to very easily make lots of loops with different lengths. So you have this polyrhythmic thing that builds. He's kind of a hardware guy, and you do get very specific different things happening when you use Cirklon. So whenever he was building these drums using that we were really just trying to avoid anything normal or predictable happening. So this is bringing in quite a lot of chaotic elements, but they do make sense, they're just, like orbiting at different speeds.

Do you ever find yourself using software instruments?

No, I don’t use any software instruments. I mean, I do for sampler-type things. Nils Frahm’s Una Corda instrument is used a lot on Singularity and in very, very processed ways on Music for Psychedelic Therapy. It’s not on this album, I don’t think.

Then there’s Ableton’s Sampler and Simpler, which are amazing, obviously. So I make racks of things and do all that, but I don’t use any source sounds other than the real synths and the piano and real instruments. It’s not a policy, it’s not an ethic, and I’ve got nothing against those things. They just don’t inspire me in the same way. I love being able to play and adjust things with hardware, and get in there and deal with the sound design later.

How do you manage frustration and creative block? What are the usual remedies?

I generally leave the studio. I don’t sit in here frustrated, like I always used to. These days I’d say I do an average of three to four hours a day in the studio. The rest of the time, it's not that I'm not working, my brain will probably keep on working, but I’ll just go and do something else. 

Sometimes an idea appears in the middle of the night, which can be inconvenient, but generally I find that devoting half the day to other things is best. For me, it's very important to do fitness, because there's nothing healthy about this situation – sitting in this chair staring at this fucking huge screen all the time. You have to react to that problem in some way. And there’s a gym upstairs, so I just go and do stuff up there. I do a lot of meditation, and I love jumping into freezing cold water and the sauna, just things that get you into your body so your brain can figure out the creative block the way it always does. And sometimes you just need to live with the section of music for a while.

This is a hideous name drop, but something I did learn from [Brian] Eno was just that it’s got to be fun, you know? As much as possible, don't get bogged down in the tiny minutiae, unless you're really enjoying doing that. And that should all happen towards the end, not early on. Sketch out the big picture first, just work as quickly as possible, dropping things in. Your session can be total chaos, but as you can see looking at this session, you can arrange it later and make it neat and tidy. And particularly with the help of a good engineer like I have as well, you can keep things organised. 

Do you feel yourself having the urge to create more of the rhythmic, techno-adjacent side of things? Or are you now more comfortable with the more meditative and less rhythmic side?

Well, this piece is very rhythmic, it just takes a long time to get there. It’s relentlessly rhythmic for the 15-minute block at the centre of it. I think I'll always do both, in honesty. What I have felt a craving for after this, which was in many ways a very heavy piece of work, is to do something light and fun, like some four-minute bangers and remixes. We'll see what happens. I’d quite like to work with some singers and do more pop stuff, but I’d say I'm probably not keen to write techno again. I’m keen to write upbeat things, though.

I don't really want to go backwards. It’s funny, I released my first album and no one really heard it. I released my second album and the people that had found the first one were disappointed that it didn't sound like that. And then I made Insides, and fans of the first two were upset as it suddenly had an edge. I made Immunity and people who loved Insides were disappointed because it was techno. I made Singularity and then they were disappointed that it sounded too much like Immunity. And then with the last two, I completely stopped thinking about how my music would be received. I’m just making things because I feel they need to be made. There's no other reason. And I’m so grateful for all the people that still listen after 25 years and get that there’s actually really just one message at the heart of it all.

Follow Jon Hopkins on his website and Instagram

Text and interview: Hal Churchman
Photo: Imogene Barron