Jon Hopkins - Music For Psychedelic Therapy

After releasing two sister albums five years apart in 2013’s ‘Immunity’ and 2018’s ‘Singularity’, it always seemed likely that Jon Hopkins would make a dramatic left turn when the time came for him to make another record. ‘Music for Psychedelic Therapy’ was apparently inspired by a “life-changing” trip to Ecuador in 2018 and if that sounds fist-gnawingly cliched by now, it’s at least worth assessing where the divergence down this particular musical avenue leaves Jon. This is a clean break from not just the last two albums but what we’ve come to expect from him as a live presence over the past few years; beats are conspicuous by their absence, undulating rhythms are swapped out for the deliberate, subtly shifting likes of the three-piece ‘Tayos Caves’ suite and the longer the album burns unassumingly on, the more you realise that he’s serious when he talks about trance as an influence - more in terms of the word’s official definition, rather than the style of music. Still, ‘Music for Psychedelic Therapy’ feels like it’ll likely be seen as an indulgence rather than an integral piece of the Jon Hopkins canon, especially once he returns to the live circuit in wholesale fashion - perhaps he’ll reinterpret these songs to be more than simply softly anthemic, or perhaps he’ll move straight onto the true successor to ‘Singularity’. Either way, this is handsome, but not essential.