EXPERIENCE

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.