It’s (Probably) fair to say, but the world of ambient/electronica/IDM/Affix preferred label does have more than its fair share of sonic cathedral of sound moments. Jon Hopkins is something of a veteran having released his breakthrough album Immunity in 2013, so depending on your point of view either deserves cutting a little slack or multiple eye roll emojis for the way in which he introduced Ritual, a work continuing on the boldly creative path taken on his previous outing Music for Psychedelic Therapy.
There aren’t really grounds for the “If you liked that..” handle on this new work, so it’s best to let Jon use his own words to describe it: “It feels like a tool, maybe even a machine, for opening portals within your inner world, for unlocking things that are hidden and buried. Things that are held in place by the tension in your body.” A bit patchouli maybe, but Ritual’s origins are in an art installation called Dreamachine, which in 2022 toured the UK offering a drug free psychedelic experience using a flashing light technique pioneered by one time William Burroughs acolyte Brion Gysin. The Guardian’s writer preached about the whole thing rapturously.
Ritual therefore is a musical half of a thing that needs your imagination to recreate the whole and suffers from the same contextual gaps all projects like this inevitably falter with. Not that Hopkins doesn’t produce some interesting moments via Evocation and the closer Nothing is Lost, but despite his high-minded ambitions, as a cypher for astral projection subjects might find it lacking. At least no sonic cathedrals were damaged in it’s making.
You can read a full review here.
The Voice Of Unreason 