Best of 2018:Jon Hopkins "Singularity" (2018)

Singularity

release date: May 4, 2018

format: digital (9 x File, FLAC)

[album rate: 4 / 5] [3,94]

producer: Jon Hopkins

label: Domino - nationality: England, UK

Track highlights: 1. "Singularity" (4,5 / 5) (official shorter video) - 2. "Emerald Rush" - 3. "Neon Pattern Drum" - 4. "Everything Connected" (4 / 5) - 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 fully 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. This is simply Hopkins' best album to date!

Highly recommended.

[ 👍Pitchfork 8,3 / 10, Mojo, Q Magazine 4 / 5, Uncut 3,5 / 5, NME 5 / 5, 👎The Guardian 2 / 5 stars ]

[ Jon Hopkins on bandcamp ]

2018 Favourite releases: 1. Jon Hopkins Singularity - 2. The Fratellis In Your Own Sweet Time - 3. Robyn Honey

Throwing Snow "Embers" (2017)

Embers
release date: Jan. 20, 2017
format: digital
[album rate: 3,5 / 5] [3,33]
producer: Ross Tones
label: Houndstooth - nationality: England, UK

Tracklist: 1. "Cantor's Dust (Part 1)" - 2. "Cantor's Dust (Part 2)" - 3. "Helical" - 4. "Allegory" - 5. "Ruins" - 6. "Gossamer's Thread" - 7. "Klaxon" - 8. "Glissette" - 9. "Recursion" - 10. "Pattern Forming" - 11. "Prism (Part 1)" - 12. "Prism (Part 2)" - 13. "Cosms" - 14. "Tesseract"
[ playlist ]

2nd studio album by electronic London-based project Throwing Snow aka Ross Tones is instrumental progressive, electronic or IDM, which both draws on more old-school techno as well as experimental electronic of the 1970s - I come to think of Jean Michel Jarre's early albums, and then there's a link to the works of Jon Hopkins.
The album consists of 14 individually tracks, but it's basically one long composition - moreover, the album ends the same way it starts, which makes it possible to listen to the album indefinitely.
Like with eg. Oxygène from 1976 by Jarre it's hard to pin out the best tracks as it's more one organic structure meant to be played from start to finish.
I really enjoy this.

Jon Hopkins "Immunity" (2013)

Immunity
release date: Jun. 3, 2013
format: cd
[album rate: 4 / 5] [3,82]
producer: Jon Hopkins
label: Domino Records - nationality: England, UK

Track highlights: 1. "We Disappear" - 2. "Open Eye Signal" - 3. "Breathe This Air" - 4. "Collider" (official shorter video) - 7. "Sun Harmonics" - 8. "Immunity"
[ full album ]

4th studio album by London-based Jon Hopkins (aka Jonathan Julian Hopkins). The album is my first acquaintance with Hopkins, and definitely not my last. Musically, it's a blend of styles of pure electronica. It encompasses house elements commonly known as minimal house - a blend of house and tech house, characterised by simpler compositions with loans from IDM and glitch pop, usually without or with little focus on traditional lyrics and instead making use of vocal arrangements in the shape of musical instrumentation. The album consists of eight distinctive tracks, although, the album really works as one whole - one long progression.
Immunity is widely regarded as Hopkins' breakthrough album and in Britain it was nominated the 2013 Mercury Prize Award (handed James Blake for the album Overgrown).
I really like its organic sound(s), which makes me think of both Icelandic post rockers Sigur Rós and glitch pop band múm fusioned with a neo-classical and progressive rock approach of say Mike Oldfield despite being far from any of those, really.
Recommended.
[ allmusic.com 3,5 / 5, Mojo, Q Magazine, The Observer, NME 4 /5, Pitchfork 8,5 / 10 stars ]

Underworld "Oblivion with Bells" (2007)

Oblivion with Bells
release date: Oct. 15, 2007
format: cd
[album rate: 3 / 5] [3,22]
producer: Rick Smith
label: Underworldlive.com - nationality: England, UK

7th studio album by Underworld is a five-year old follow-up to A Hundred Days Off (Sep. 2002) and it's a self-released studio album, for which the duo has engaged in the more original electronic styles of techno. It's still progressive house but they have turned up on the tech house and idm style with the addition of ambient elements.
It's both a return to their initial experiments with electronic music and a progression to include what to me sound more like original techno with trace elements, leaving the breakbeats of house. It may still be progressive but as progressive techno the album is not one of my preferred Underworld albums.
I really neglected the album for years, but I have come to see it as more than 'just' a take on original techno' as its simply more instrumental and experimental proving that Hyde and Smith are seeking new ways of expressing themselves without letting go of their known formula of tech house.
[ allmusic.com, Slant 3 / 5 stars ]

Underworld "Beaucoup Fish" (1999)

Beaucoup Fish
release date: Mar. 1, 1999
format: cd
[album rate: 4 / 5] [4,32]
producer: Underworld
label: JBO - nationality: England, UK

Tracklist: 1. "Cups" - 2. "Push Upstairs" - 3. "Jumbo" (5 / 5) - 4. "Shudder / King Of Snake" (4 / 5) - 5. "Winjer" (4 / 5) - 6. "Skym" - 7. "Bruce Lee" - 8. "Kittens" (4 / 5) - 9. "Push Downstairs" (4 / 5) - 10. "Something Like a Mama" (4 / 5) - 11. "Moaner" (4,5 / 5)

5th studio album by Underworld follows three years after Second Toughest in the Infants (Mar. 1996) and to me this the absolute best album by the trio. Although, they have taken a move away from breakbeat, I think this is a masterpiece of progressive house. I have listened to this album a thousand times and I still enjoy it. It's also my first acquisition with the band.
As one of the best albums of the year this is highly recommended.
[ allmusic.com, NME 4 / 5, Mixmag 5 / 5 stars ]

1999 Favourite releases: 1. The Chemical Brothers Surrender - 2. Underworld Beaucoup Fish - 3. Everything but the Girl Temperamental