release date: May 4, 2018
format: digital (9 x File, FLAC)
[album rate: 4 / 5] [3,88]
producer: Jon Hopkins
label: Domino - nationality: England, UK
Track highlights: 1. "Singularity" (4 / 5) (official shorter video) - 2. "Emerald Rush" - 3. "Neon Pattern Drum" - 4. "Everything Connected" - 6. "C O S M" - 8. "Luminous Beings"
[ full album ]
5th studio album by Jon Hopkins follows five years after Immunity (Jun. 2013). Five years is quite a long time in the music business, and it hasn't been time wasted for Hopkins, who has been a much sought for producer, co-writer, and composer on various releases. He has worked for Coldplay and toured with the band, and he has made the soundtrack album How I Live Now for the drama film by Kevin Mcdonald.
The album is a different creature than the acclaimed predecessor, and it's actually impressive how varied the album is, when it's still an extremenly coherent whole. Immunity also excelled with progressive compositions and patterns that keep evolving but that's something you dsicover is taken much further here. Stylewise, it's still in the same ballgame where tech house meets downtempo and where the experimental ingredient is ever-present. All that remains, but on top of that all compositions have that ambient quality that proppels you on a forward trip into unknown territory of deep space. Listening to this, have me thinking that it's liekly the closest you can get to have an experience that equels that of tripping from Crystal Meth without actually having taken a drug. Of course you don't hallucinate, you still consciously know where you are but may have an impression of sinking into some kind of transmission and feel an out-of-body-experience. Anyway, I get it.
Singularity is Hopkin's first and only album to top the UK Dance charts and it's also his best charting album on the general albums chart list peaking at number #9, which I do understand. His 2013 album rightfully provided him international fame and this newest album only underlines his status as one of Britain's most fascinating composers of electronic music.
Highly recommended.
[ 👍Pitchfork 8,3 / 10, Mojo, Q Magazine 4 / 5, Uncut 3,5 / 5, NME 5 / 5, 👎The Guardian 2 / 5 stars ]
