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Photo: A Pitchblack Playback album listening session in Copenhagen / Pitchblack Playback

Pitchblack Playback: Jon Hopkins’ RITUAL

  • Experience
  • Past Event
  • Music
  • Immersion
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PHI Centre Espace 1 + Listening room
407 Saint-Paul St
Montreal, Quebec, H2Y 2M3

All ages

SEPTEMBER 5*
SPATIAL AUDIO EXPERIENCE IN ESPACE 1

Doors: 7:30 PM
Event: 8 PM

*THIS EVENT IS SOLD OUT

──

SEPTEMBER 615
LISTENING SESSIONS IN HABITAT SONORE

Friday: 4:30 PM to 9 PM
Saturday: 1:30 PM to 9 PM
Sunday: 1:30 PM to 9 PM

Duration: Approximately 45 min.
Last entry: 7:30 PM

General admission: $21.75*

*Price including service fees, excluding taxes

Note: Tickets include a Pitchblack Playback eye mask for extra darkness. The intimate listening sessions inside Habitat Sonore are only for 10 people each.

To celebrate the release of Jon Hopkins’ new album RITUAL, join us for a spatial audio experience in the PHI Centre’s concert venue on September 5

The celebration will then continue with small group listening sessions in our Habitat Sonore: Listening room from September 6 to 8 and September 13 to 15.

What is Habitat Sonore? ↓

Presented by

Pitchblack Playback: Jon Hopkins' RITUAL

JON HOPKINS'
NEW ALBUM

A week after its official release, audiences are being given the opportunity to experience Jon Hopkins’ forthcoming album RITUAL (Domino Record Label) in its entirety at the PHI Centre.

The kinetic counterpart to Jon’s most recent release, the celebrated innerspace odyssey Music For Psychedelic Therapy, the new work is a single track, 41-minute ceremonial epic, built from cavernous subs, hypnotic drumming and transcendent melodic interplay. Tense, immersive and ultimately triumphant, it is a culmination of themes explored throughout his 22-year career.

“I have no idea what I’m doing when I’m composing. I don’t know where it’s coming from, or where it’s going. I just know when it’s finished,” says Jon. “What is clear is that this one had the structure of a Ritual. I know what that Ritual is for me, but it will be something different for you. All I know is it felt like a tool, even a machine, for opening portals within your inner world, for unlocking things that are hidden and buried. It doesn’t feel like an album, therefore, more a process to go through, something that works on you.”

Lovingly constructed from many hundreds of constituent parts from a cast of trusted collaborators, Jon describes his role as akin to “building a temple”, with every brick and detail carefully fashioned and coloured in service to the whole.

The results of this joyful enterprise in sonic divination will be available for everyone to experience in spatial audio at the PHI Centre’s Habitat Sonore listening room.

WHAT PEOPLE SAY ABOUT
THE EXPERIENCE

"I urge you to find a Pitchblack Playback event near you and go along."

—TechRadar

"It’s the way I remember experiencing music when I was a teenager, turning out the lights and just allowing myself to be carried away by the music."

—Steven Wilson

"This [experience] sounds great"

Rick Rubin

"I have an out-of-body experience every time I go [to a Pitchblack Playback listening session]."

—Jonny,
artist manager

“Only someone with Hopkins’ compositional know-how could pull this off so effortlessly.”

—Pitchfork

PRESENTED BY



  • Pitchblack Playback have hosted album listening sessions in the dark around the world since 2016 in cinemas and in other great sound spaces. Their events seek to create a space where music can be enjoyed in high quality with no distractions, and have been attended by some 30,000 people to date.

ABOUT HABITAT SONORE

Habitat Sonore is an intimate listening space designed to accommodate up to 10 people. This small capacity enhances total immersion into the sound world of artists from here and elsewhere. The experience unfolds in near darkness, which helps to emphasize the sound. We invite you to settle in comfortably, let your mind wander, close your eyes if you wish, and be carried away by a unique and captivating auditory journey.

Learn more about the listening room and its programming here ↓

240817 Habitat Sonore credit Julien Grimard Cover

Habitat Sonore: Listening room

November 21 January 19

Tune out outside noise and immerse yourself in one of Montreal's only spatial audio listening rooms

Experience Music

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