Jon Hopkins makes music – without beats and without rhythms. A conversation about his experiences with hallucinogenic drugs, the influence of music on the psyche and how sound can heal people.
Interviewed by
Andrian Kreye
Jon Hopkins’ strength was always that he programmed his music in such a way that every room, every hall and, apart from his concerts, every head could be transformed into a world in which everything dissolved into beats. It is sometimes as if the whole body were seized by the pulse and the head by the images of a higher power. There are only a few who weave the interplay of electronic beats, analogue, even acoustic instruments and everyday noises as virtuously and masterfully as the now 42-year-old Londoner on his albums “Immunity” and “Singularity”. That’s why Brian Eno and cold play again and again in the studio. And that’s why Hopkins became a role model for an entire generation of musicians with his method, with which he deconstructed the concrete grooves of house and techno and reassembled them in ever new ramifications and layers.