Jon Hopkins drops new album ‘Wilding (Original Soundtrack)’

Jon Hopkins has teamed up with Iceland’s Biggi Hilmars to share ‘Wilding (Original Soundtrack)’, a new score composed to accompany the 2024 documentary Wilding. 

Slated for physical release on 3rd April via Domino Soundtracks, the project has been spearheaded by Hopkins’ ‘Wilding Theme’, an organic, immersive number that sees him manipulate his own voice such that, in his words, it “sounds more like a strange kind of ancient woodwind instrument”. Continuing, he elaborates: I wanted my contributions to the film to feel like something old and constant - a kind of memory, something long held in the land that is finally coming back to life.”

The documentary itself focuses on the efforts of farmers Isabella Tree and Charlie Burrell to re-wild the forest of the Knepp Estate in South-East England, allowing nature to take its course to regenerate the damaged environment.

As such, ‘Wilding (Original Soundtrack)’ takes cues from the natural world, building on the foundations laid by Hopkins on 2013’s ‘Immunity’; as he explains, they developed that King Creosote collab into “a new iteration that sat over one particularly beautiful scene explaining the symbiotic relationship between the jay and the oak.” From there, this new material was born. 

Check out Hopkins’ ‘Wilding Theme’ and the full album tracklist below.