Jon Hopkins has announced a new covers EP called Piano Versions. It’s out next Friday, April 16 via Domino and it includes the previously released rendition of Thom Yorke’s ‘Dawn Chorus’ as well as a newly unveiled cover of ‘Wintergreen’, from Roger and Brian Eno’s 2020 album Mixing Colours. Check it out below, along with the EP’s cover artwork and tracklist.
In addition to Thom Yorke and Roger and Brian Eno, Piano Versions will also feature covers of ‘Heron’ by Scottish folk musician James Yorkston as well as Luke Abbott’s 2012 single ‘Modern Driveway’. Hopkins said of the project in a statement:
Piano Versions is four minimal, ambient piano covers of songs I have loved for a long time that come from very different places. It seems to me that melody is universal and the ones that I really connect to shine out irrespective of genre or context, whether from techno, folk or whatever. I loved the simplicity of having my old upright piano be the centre of a whole record for the first time. But the importance of letting the outside world into the recordings is as present for me as ever, so there are layers of incidental noise, bird song, the sound of someone washing up in the studio kitchen — whatever was going on outside my room is included and even accentuated. I want people to hear not just the recordings but to feel how it felt to be there and make them. It was a deep experience.
Piano Versions is presented as a companion record to 2014’s Asleep Versions. Hopkins’ most recent album, Singularity, was released in 2018.
Piano Versions EP Cover Artwork:
Piano Versions EP Tracklist:
1. Dawn Chorus (Thom Yorke Cover)
2. Heron (James Yorkston Cover)
3. Modern Driveway (Luke Abbott Cover)
4. Wintergreen (Roger Eno and Brian Eno Cover)
