Jon Hopkins - Ritual - Import CD

Credits:

Jon Hopkins

Description:

Tense, immersive, and ultimately uplifting, Jon Hopkins' latest album is now available on Domino! Jon Hopkins' new album, RITUAL, is characterized by depth and contrast. Inspired by ritual, spiritual liberation, and the hero's journey, it embraces ancient primal energies in a 41-minute electronic symphony of cavernous subwoofers, hypnotic drumming, and transcendent melodies. Tense, immersive, and ultimately uplifting, it is the culmination of themes explored throughout his 22-year career and a dynamic counterpart to his previous album, 2021's Music For Psychedelic Therapy. The preview track "RITUAL (evocation)," released to coincide with the album's release, consists of deeply hypnotic drums and a long buildup that seems to aim for a revelatory light. It leads through a storm of dissonance into a wild arpeggio shimmer, culminating in clear, soaring vocals.RITUAL was completed in late 2023, but was inspired by music Hopkins composed in 2022 for the Dreamachine project in London, which used strobe effects to induce visual stimuli. RITUAL is emotionally and sonically profound, but also warm and live, with a juxtaposition of softness and intensity at the heart of the whole. I hope you take the time to prepare yourself and immerse yourself in "RITUAL" for 41 uninterrupted minutes. When I am composing, I have no idea what I am doing. I don't know where I'm coming from, I don't know where I'm going, and I don't think it matters. But I do know the moment of completion. So all I can do is sense the end, analyze retrospectively what is happening, and think about what its purpose is. What is clear is that this work has a ritual structure. For me it is a ritual, but for you it is something different. I feel it is important not to make assumptions about what this ritual actually is.It feels like a tool, perhaps even a machine, to open the entrance to one's inner world and unleash what is hidden and buried. Something that is held in place by the tension of the body. So this work may fall outside the common definition of an "album. An ongoing process, or something that speaks to you. At the same time, it feels like there is a story here. A story of a process I'm going through, and maybe one that we are all going through. Maybe it is also a story of creation, destruction, and transcendence. Maybe it is a story of a typical hero's journey, a journey of forgetting and remembering. - Jon Hopkins

Tracklisting:

1.part i - altar
2.part ii - palace / illusion
3.part iii - transcend / lament
4.part iv - the veil
5.part v - evocation
6.part vi - solar goddess return
7.part vii - dissolution
8.part viii - nothing is lost