Jon Hopkins
Singularity

There is something transcendental about Jon Hopkins' new album. A journey of transformation and liberation, from the initial sense of frustration with the state of the contemporary world to the ultimate conclusion that true peace can only come from nature.

The London DJ and composer Jon Hopkins, born in 1979, spent a period in the desert under the influence of psychedelic substances to compose the tracks that make up Singularity. A visionary album, exploring states of mind, the raw and instinctive sounds of nature in stark contrast to the calculated and synthetic sounds of urban architecture.
Singularity is designed to be listened to from start to finish without any interruption, without distinction between the various tracks. If in the first half hour of the record, from the spectral and claustrophobic title track to the very long and epic "Everything Connected" passing through the noisy and splendid "Neon Pattern Drum," there is a prominent inclination towards clubbing, minimal techno, and the robotic and schizoid meticulousness of electronic music, in the second half of the record, the boundless opening of nature takes over, as the piano and light keyboards come to the forefront in the delicate track "Feel First Free," ambient music with strong ancestral and pure connotations that explode noiselessly in the impalpable beat of "Luminous Beings." Techno music that blends with ambient and classical music references. Urban and technological despotism immersed in the millennial spatial sound of the most vivid and uncontaminated nature.

Jon Hopkins' sound is multilayered. Layer upon layer, beat upon beat, glitch upon glitch, computerized music that creates the solid body of Singularity, well-grounded and structured. The soul of this perfect body is the melodies that grow, multiply, and merge with one another. Arpeggios upon arpeggios, piano keys that, like stars in the night sky, distribute themselves in the boundless cosmos, offering beauty, light, and magic. Singularity is thunderous, cathartic, spectral, visceral, honest. Everything is perfect; every track that fades into the next compels the listener to savor the beauty of the entire album at once, slowly and with closed eyes. The piano cradles our synapses in a Milky Way made of notes, rhythms, and sounds that rise from the center of the earth to soar into the endless blue sky.

Singularity is akin, in urban and synthesized beats, to the music of Moderat, Burial, and Trentemøller, while simultaneously approaching the neoclassical openings of Brian Eno and Hans Zimmer. A listening experience to be measured, savored to fully appreciate its boundless beauty. Lying on the ground immersed in silence, or on a train while traversing fields, cities, day and night. An album that makes us dance and reflect, an ambient album that stirs ancestral and hidden emotions within our inner self. Singularity is the connection with nature that saves us from the decay of contemporary society; it is the ascension to the cosmos to redeem us from urbanization that has erased every past contact with nature. Singularity is the culmination of a musician's career in constant evolution and in search of the perfect sound, without ever neglecting emotion and instinct.

Jon Hopkins has found the winning formula with this chilling record, a masterpiece of electronic microhouse and ambient that immerses us in a warm and welcoming amniotic fluid, in an uncontaminated universe, in a world made of nature and silence that brings us back to the bare earth that gave us life. Singularity is a timeless and spaceless musical masterpiece, where every single sound offers pure sensations and chilling melodies. A spectacular record, where everything fits perfectly and thoughtfully, yet where authentic emotions prevail.