RITUAL

Jon Hopkins' music is filled with empathy and compassion, even if it often (consciously) struggles with maintaining composure. It is conceptual and complex, yet also astonishingly simple at times, and this juxtaposition is what inevitably draws other artists (most notably Eno, Coldplay and David Holmes) into his orbit. In 2021, he released Music for Psychedelic Therapy, an ambient album designed to accompany psychedelic experiences, and with his latest album, RITUAL, Hopkins has created another churning, constantly evolving epic that is both fragile and robust, haunting and affirming.RITUAL was started back in 2022, when Hopkins began composing a short piece that would soundtrack a project called Dreamachine. Presented by Collective Act as part of Unboxed: Creativity in the UK, the immersive experience was a collaboration between artists, scientists and philosophers, who worked together to develop an interactive art piece influenced by the work of British-Canadian artist/writer/inventor Brion Gysin. Adapting Gysin's concept of a "dreamachine" (which had also previously influenced avant-jazz composer John Zorn), the work utilized light and music to give participants a hallucinatory psychedelic experience without the use of drugs, a transcendental and metaphysically eye-opening encounter.Although broken up into eight parts, RITUAL is meant to unfold — and be listened to — as a single 41-minute piece. In composing the album, Hopkins was inspired by ceremonial practices, spiritual liberation and the hero's journey, although his main focus was to leave the "story" behind the ritual open to interpretation. His experience is different from every other listener's experience, and this open-ended approach allows for projection, acceptance and surrender.The first sound — a quick sucking noise — forcefully pulls you in, as if through a wormhole, a ringing drone portal sending you flying through a pulsating soundscape filled with contrasts and unexpected deviations. Wordless, disembodied voices cooing indistinguishable phrases appear and disappear, as if pushing through a dream. Abrasive noise, distorted and red, wraps around the voices, helping them soar.For the piece, Hopkins worked with a number of long-term collaborators (Vylana, 7RAYS, Ishq, Clark, Emma Smith, Daisy Vatalaro and Cherif Hashizume), but it's Hopkins's well-established melodic experimentalism that drives the work. The piece has a propulsive quality, even if it isn't travelling at a danceable BPM, and at 41 minutes, it never lags. It's also very listenable, its infinite aural nuances — blips and bloops, pounds and crackles, hisses and animal sounds — offering a constant source of delight, calm and exploration.Thankfully, this isn't simply background ambient noise, as some albums in this category tend to be. Instead, RITUAL is active, even a bit frenzied at times, and its middle section (starting at around the 17-minute mark, or "part iv – the veil") is downright unsettling, a whirring cyclone of crunchy percussion, droning noise and rising actions. Instruments and sounds rise while others crumble and dissolve; it is both warm and glacial, its buzzing, frayed electronics depicting a frazzled devotion. It is meant to empower and terrify… or not. Really, this is your trip: you are the one traveling through Hopkins's vortex, and you get to decide what these sounds and moments and sonic memories mean to you. This is the album's greatest strength: it is endlessly adaptable and interpretable, subverting its genesis as a commissioned art piece soundtrack in favour of something grander, more accessible and vulnerable. This is music at its most generous and compassionate; it takes patience, but it earns the right to ask for a little undivided attention.Drifting along on light piano lines and a soft, pulsing rhythm, the album ends much differently than it started, letting the listener float away instead of casting them out. As it softly — and literally — purrs to an end, we are resigned, elated. The RITUAL completed, we are back in our bed, petting our cat, altered and blissed out. This isn't oblivion: it's ascension.