Jon Hopkins has announced a new album. It’s titled Music For Psychedelic Therapy, and it comes out November 12 (digital/CD) and February 11 (LP) via Domino. Today’s announcement comes with the release of the first single and album closer ‘Sit Around the Fire’, a collaboration with producer and ceremony guide East Forest and the late guru Ram Dass. The track arrives with an accompanying video created by Tom Readdy and Lucy Dawkins at Yes Please using imagery from the pages of Ram Dass’ book Be Here Now. Check it out below and scroll down for the LP’s cover artwork and tracklist.
Music for Psychedelic Therapy marks Hopkins’ first full-length release since 2018’s Singularity. “It felt like time for a reset, to wait for music to appear from a different place,” Hopkins said of the album, which is inspired by a creative expedition he went on in 2018 at Tayos Caves in Ecuador. He added:
What grew from this experience is an album with no beats, not one drum sound, something that is closer to a classical symphony than a dance / electronica record. Something that is more like having an experience than listening to a piece of music. Maybe something far more emotionally honest than I had been comfortable making before – a merging of music, nature and my own desire to heal. The freedom from traditional rhythmic structures unlocked so much – it felt like I was free to explore a new form of rhythm, one that you discover when you just allow things to flow without letting yourself get in the way.
Music For Psychedelic Therapy is not ambient, classical or drone but has elements of all three. For me it’s a place as much as it is a sound. It works for the sober mind, but takes on a new dimension entirely when brought into a psychedelic ceremony. In my own psychedelic explorations testing this music, I found a quote I had read would keep coming to mind. ‘Music is liquid architecture, architecture is frozen music.’ I love this idea of music as something you inhabit, something that works on you energetically. In fact, it was while in that state that the title appeared to me. Psychedelic-assisted therapies are moving into legality across the world, and yet it feels like no one is talking about the music; the music is as important as the medicine.
Elaborating on ‘Sit Around the Fire’, Hopkins said: “I was contacted by East Forest, who had spent some time with Ram Dass in Hawaii before he passed. He was given access to several lesser-heard talks from the 70s, and asked to set them to music. He sent me some starting points, including the beautiful choral vocals he recorded which open the piece. I put my headphones on and with Ram Dass’ voice inside my head, I sat at the piano and improvised. What you hear is the first thing that came out – it just appeared in response to the words.”
Music For Psychedelic Therapy Cover Artwork:
Music For Psychedelic Therapy Tracklist:
1. Welcome
2. Tayos Caves, Ecuador i
3. Tayos Caves, Ecuador ii
4. Tayos Caves, Ecuador iii
5. Love Flows Over Us In Prismatic Waves
6. Deep In The Glowing Heart
7. Ascending, Dawn Sky
8. Arriving
9. Sit Around The Fire (with Ram Dass, East Forest)
