Album review
Jon Hopkins has announced his first album since 2021’s Music for Psychedelic Therapy. It’s called RITUAL, and it arrives August 30 via Domino. Collaborators on the LP include ylana, 7RAYS, Ishq, Clark, Emma Smith, Daisy Vatalaro, and Cherif Hashizume. As a preview, Hopkins has shared ‘RITUAL (evocation)’, which is meant “to give listeners a window into the full experience.” Check out a video for it below.
Discussing the new album, Hopkins said:
I have no idea what I’m doing when I’m composing. I don’t know where it’s coming from, and I don’t know where it’s going, nor does it seem to matter. I just know when it is finished.So all I can really do is feel my way to the end, then try and retrospectively analyse what might be going on, and try and figure out what its purpose is. What is clear is that this one has the structure of a Ritual. I know what that Ritual is for me, but it will be something different for you. It feels important not to be prescriptive about what this Ritual actually is.
It feels like a tool, maybe even a machine, for opening portals within your inner world, for unlocking things that are hidden and buried. Things that are held in place by the tension in your body. It doesn’t feel like “an album” therefore – more a process to go through, something that works on you. At the same time, it feels like it tells a story. Maybe it’s the story of a process I’m going through, and one that we are all going through. Maybe it’s also the story of creation, destruction and transcendence. Maybe it’s the story of the archetypal hero’s journey – the journey of forgetting and remembering.
RITUAL Cover Artwork:
RITUAL Tracklist:
1. part i – altar
2. part ii – palace / illusion
3. part iii – transcend / lament
4. part iv – the veil
5. part v – evocation
6. part vi – solar goddess return
7. part vii – dissolution
8. part viii – nothing is lost
