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Avg: 4.0 (95 ratings)
- Date Released: May 4, 2009
- Genre: Electronic
- Label: Domino Recording Co
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We Say...
Jon Hopkins is a classically-trained pianist led astray by his love of ambient electronics and studio production. His first two releases, both on Just Music, attracted the attention of Brian Eno, among others. Through Eno, Hopkins became a co-producer of Coldplay's global smash, Viva La Vida or Death And All His Friends, contributing keyboards and eventually touring with the band. The Coldplay album begins and ends with songs co-composed by Hopkins; both are based on material that appears in the song "Light Through The Veins," now the first single from his 2009 album Insides, on Domino Records. Hopkins' music is an appealing yet unsettling blend of lyrical classical piano, or occasional bowed strings, with chilly electronics and rumbling sounds that can be difficult to identify. He's developed a keen ear for texture, as on the track "The Wider Sun," where violin/viola create a sort of downtempo chamber music, only for the sound to imperceptibly fade to an electronic wash. In Hopkins' atmospheric, post-everything work, boundaries between acoustic and electronic are as intentionally blurry as those between rock and classical.
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They Say...
Jon Hopkins got a pretty big résumé boost in 2008 through his production work (alongside Brian Eno and others) on Coldplay's Viva la Vida. Prior to this he had worked with Massive Attack and released two albums on small labels. His debut for Domino, 2009's Insides, is his first record that many people will hear and it's a promising, but flawed, debut. It shows that Hopkins has a firm grasp on many styles of electronic music but doesn't prove to be a master of any. He dips into ominously distorted gangsta glitch on the title track, lush big beat on "Wire," burbling orchestral dubstep on "Vessel" and icy cold IDM on "Colour Eye," and while each excursion sounds good, there is nothing much happening a fan of electronic music in its many forms hasn't heard done better before. If there is an over-riding aesthetic to Insides, it's the kind of ambient techno that labels like Instinct and artists like Pete Namlook and Irresistible Force were making in the early 1990s. He creates acoustic instruments with synthesizers and programmed beats to create very pleasant, very well-crafted pieces that don't really challenge the listener but instead create a kind of warm, fuzzy blanket of sound for them to settle into. The problem many artists face who attempt this is that the end result comes awfully close to sounding like generic new age-y music that drifts in one ear and out the other. While there are some tracks, like the overly subdued "The Low Places" and the beat-free songs that bookend the album ("The Wider Sun" and "Autumn Hill") that fall prey to this, mostly Hopkins' ear for a good melody and his willingness to occasionally dirty up the beats keep the album off of life support. The best song here, the sunny and bright, epic length electro-ballad "Light Through the Veins," even points to a possible future where Hopkins develops a voice of his own and makes a record that breaks free of the genre exercises and half-formed ideas that make keep Insides from being a success.
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| 01. |  |
The Wilder Sun |
2:34 |
|
| 02. | |
Vessel |
4:41 |
|
| 03. | |
Insides |
4:38 |
|
| 04. | |
Wire |
4:41 |
|
| 05. | |
Colour Eye |
5:11 |
|
| 06. | |
Light Throuh The Veins |
9:18 |
|
| 07. | |
The Low Places |
6:34 |
|
| 08. | |
Small Memory |
1:40 |
|
| 09. | |
A Drifting Up |
6:27 |
|
| 10. | |
Autumn Hill |
2:40 |
|
10 Total Tracks, 48:24 Total Length
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Credits
- Steve Gullick - Portrait Photography // Trinita Lattimore - Typography // Leo Abrahams - Guitar (Electric) // Leo Abrahams - Hurdygurdy // Emma Smith - Violin // Jon Hopkins - Engineer // Jon Hopkins - Writer // Vince Sipprell - Viola // Davide Rossi - Electric Violin // Cherif Hashizume - Engineer // Lisa Lindley Jones - Vocals
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