Jon Hopkins - Singularity

The Quietus

The way Jon Hopkins describes the process of writing his new album Singularity sounds like a 60s flower child’s autobiography. After the huge success of his 2013 breakthrough release Immunity and its worldwide tour, Hopkins took some time off and “set about having new life experiences” including “exploring psychedelic states” in California and learning a Tibetan-inspired breathing technique which, he found, “opened up a new well of positive thoughts”.

This expansion of horizons is evident in the new album. Its ambient dance ancestry is enriched with a dizzying array of styles and genres, moods and soundworlds. The original intention of Singularity was to have each sound emerge organically from what came before, but Hopkins grew frustrated with the lack of spontaneity in this method and began to write more fluidly, trusting his instincts with no plan in mind. Thus the declared journey of the album - “a sonic ecosystem that begins and ends on the same note: a universe beginning, expanding, and contracting towards the same infinitesimal point” - has become somewhat blurred and indistinct. Still, it is quite a journey.

‘Singularity’, the first track, does indeed begin on a single luminous note which begins to pulse, building in intensity until joined by the semitone below, followed by the tone above; classic Hopkins, marking this music out immediately as his. After its blissed-out birth, ‘Singularity’ becomes a track for dancing. And it’s not alone. Excellently crafted beats emerge throughout the album in tracks like ‘Neon Pattern Drum’, ‘Emerald Rush’ - also released as a single - and most notably in the hefty ‘Everything Connected’, which Hopkins describes as a “massive techno bastard”.

The celestial theme is often evident: the opening of ‘Emerald Rush’, with its delicate uneven arpeggios, is like music notated from the radio signals of distant stars. As it develops a deep comforting bassline, Hopkins’ way with harmony is again evident - the simple progressions pack a punch of pathos.

But it is in the more unusual textures that Hopkins’ recent mind-expansion - chemical and otherwise - seems most evident. The ominous clicky beat of ‘Luminous Beings’ leads us to a tantalising solo string hiatus which sounds refreshingly novel. We hear Hopkins’ own piano playing too. Although he included a solo piano track on his last album in 2013 - the beautiful ‘Abandon Window’ - Hopkins fell back on a growing smudge of reverb to keep it firmly in the realm of electronica. But in Singularity’s Satie-esque ‘Echo Dissolve’, the audio is left almost clean, ending with a good 20 seconds of silence; and the effect is breathtaking.

None of this is to say there isn’t plenty here for lovers of more banging EDM to get their teeth (and feet) into. But anyone hearing a track like ‘First Feel Life’ - a luminous choral hymn reminiscent of Pärt or Tavener - has to acknowledge that this could be but a dazzling glimpse of the scope of Hopkins’ ability and vision. Keep up those breathing exercises, Jon.

Share this article:

Bandcamp Daily

On his latest album, Jon Hopkins balances chaos with beauty.

Pitchfork 83

Pitched between heat-seeking acid house and ambient bliss, the techno auteur’s first album since 2013 is a beat-music odyssey that thrums with spiritual resonance.

Drowned In Sound 80

So here we are, some five years removed and while Deafheaven have released a record between then and now (and have another due) Hopkins has been relatively quiet since the release of Immunity bar a few DJ appearances here and there. So what excitement it was to hear that Hopkins was finally releasing a follow-up to his landmark record, something many had been waiting for with bated breath.

Singularity, it would be fair to say, comes with a pretty high degree of hype, not only from fans but also Hopkins himself, who waxed lyrical about his advancements in the studio going into it. How noticeable those advancements are is debateable, but what seems irrefutable is the man’s consistency, as while this may not be a massive departure from Immunity, this is still such a satisfying sound half a decade later that it’s still pretty hard to find many faults with.

With Immunity, Hopkins built an immediate legacy of UK based producers along side the likes of Four Tet and Caribou that had a clear crossover appeal outside just the electronic scene. Singularity, then, builds on this with no hesitance, as the title track opener here immediately announces. From there, things progress in the familiarly satisfying way that Immunity did; proving as a perfect record to get lost in, to travel with, to love.

Centre-piece and recent single ‘Everything Connected’, for instance plays to a similar beat and rhythm as ‘Open Eye Signal’, the monster track from Immunity, though in this instance, the track feeds into the rest of the record without feeling like an outlier – something its predecessor is a little bit guilty of. Indeed, generally speaking, Singularity’s major strength is the fact that it feels like a more cohesive record, to be enjoyed from front to back, rather than Immunity’s occasional tendency to feel a little top heavy.

Either way, Singularity shares the ability to feel like a journey in a very similar way to how Hopkins’ previous record did, be that a literal trip or a journey through a club night into the early hours; either way, his sound works perfectly for both. Where the two records differ, is largely in Hopkins’ trust in his own craft to be more ambient and atmospheric where the record needs it, should such a thing be imaginable. The record’s middle run of ‘Feel First Life’, ‘C O S M’ & ‘Echo Dissolve’ give a distinct grounding to the record which is well placed and paced within the grander scheme of things.

This leads to final couplet of ‘Luminous Beings’ and ‘Recovery’, which are a truly beautiful send-off that apparently only Hopkins could really envision. It is a satisfying finale to yet another satisfying record from the London-based producer, who, while loses marks for his perhaps too similar creation, remains an important figure in the UK electronic scene and for good reason. Ultimately, Singularity will shape your summer of 2018 the same way Immunity did of 2013, and all power to it.

The Guardian 60

(Domino)

Hopkins’s last album was an intriguing meld of expansive and introspective compositions, hitting a sweet spot between Nils Frahm and Four Tet. Where Immunity was the soundtrack to an imaginary big night out, Hopkins delineates a natural psychedelic experience on Singularity. To get you to share his trip, he weaves wordless vocals around warped found sounds in his pointillist, semi-improvised productions.

Strangely, this creates an album pretty similar to its predecessor. Intricate floorfillers dissolve into austere piano pieces and recombine, with lots of longueurs. Even weirder, Hopkins deliberately starts and ends Singularity on the same note. Being brought back to where you began is what you want from a hire van, not a psych trip – it’s why the Merry Pranksters didn’t get the Circle Line.

The Guardian 40

(Domino)

Written amid calculated mind expansion, via transcendental meditation and naturally occurring psychedelics, Jon Hopkins, the Mercury-nominated producer who has credits with Brian Eno and Coldplay, hones his exploratory take on HD electronics on this smoothly sequenced trip. The level of craft is extremely high. The way the beats on the two big techno numbers, Everything Connected and Emerald Rush, crunch and splinter to blur the quantization requires expert sound design, and the latter swings with an almost reggaeton groove – it is exceptionally good. But what use is craft if you have nothing to say? Just as what seems universe-sharpeningly significant on drugs is revealed to be laughably obvious the morning after, the tracks in the album’s more ambient second half appear deep while being nothing of the sort. Luminous Beings pulses prettily for 12 minutes like a light-up mobile you let your baby stare at while you neck some wine, and C O S M nicks the reversed-strings effect Four Tet came up with 15 years ago – compare its blinkered emotional range with the brilliant peak of Emerald Rush, where anxiety and dread muscle in to push the chords downwards. The title track works as an overture but not in isolation, and Neon Pattern Drum’s mood doesn’t deviate from mild peril (though it may bang in his live set). The nadir is the three tracks – inevitable among him and his posh-trance peers – of maddeningly basic and unimaginative piano minimalism, like Ryuichi Sakamoto robbed of his spatial awareness. Too much of this album is the sort of thing people stick on to make their drug comedowns feel meaningful.