- Inspired by and for psychedelic trips, Jon Hopkins' soothing ambient record falls short of his usual high marks.
- Jon Hopkins has been making psychedelic music for years. His best albums, Immunity and Singularity, project his melodies and rhythms in IMAX scope, processing every sound on a granular level. Expertly programmed beats dissolve and reform, propelling through washes of blistering feedback, breathy vocals and crystalline piano figures. Hopkins describes both albums in terms of the drug experiences that influenced them: Immunity captures the euphoric highs and melancholic lows of MDMA, while Singularity crests the cosmic peaks of a psilocybin trip. They stretch towards a transcendental spirituality aided by hallucinogens, serving as odes to the trip rather than guides. When he tries his hand at the latter with Music for Psychedelic Therapy, Hopkins can't seem to reach the same highs.
Inspired by his experience with taking ketamine in Ecuador's Tayos caves, Hopkins structures the album as one continuous ambient piece, shorn of his usual crushing drums. Though it attempts a spiritual journey deep into the mind's core, Music For Psychedelic Therapy instead plays more like a highly-skilled improv set at a high-end art gallery, coaxed from a table full of expensive gear. Occasionally the music coalesces into moments of beauty before dissipating in search of a new structure. At its best, the LP touches on the dizzying maximalism that made past records so thrilling. But at other times it treads the same ground as the healing frequency meditation videos that proliferate on YouTube.
Though Music For Psychedelic Therapy exudes a generally soothing vibe, it lacks the tension needed to hold the listener’s focus. This is clearly made with deep listening in mind—it's Hopkins' take on Music For Airports, after all. Unfortunately the album settles in place more often than it expands. "Arriving," for instance, features a single shimmering chord that disappears slowly over the course of its four minutes. A voice enters about halfway through with some gentle, meandering humming, retreating shortly thereafter as though it were a placeholder an engineer forgot to delete. It's certainly pleasant, but there's nothing to latch on to. The triptych meant to center the album, "Tayos Caves, Ecuador i-iii," sounds like a choir practicing vocal warm ups in a cathedral. Though they unfold into a peaceful drone, the songs fade from speakers and memory simultaneously.
The best moments acknowledge how psychedelic trips can be overwhelming, sometimes dark. "Welcome" opens with spiraling siren noises before giving way into a sparkling drone with harsh overtones. As the sirens retreat into the background, the whole track glistens with a nervous, uneasy energy. The album's centerpiece, "Deep In The Glowing Heart," blurs field recordings with undulating synths. Its slowly crashing waves of sequencers engulf the stereo field while the chord changes add a sense of uncertainty. When Hopkins remembers his compositional chops and studio wizardry, Music For Psychedelic Therapy becomes mind-bending ambient music he set out to make.
For the most part, though, the album feels a bit too self-absorbed to get there. Hopkins fancies himself a guru, going as far as sampling Ram Dass on the album's quietly melodramatic closer, "Sit Around the Fire." By titling it Music for Psychedelic Therapy, he makes clear his intentions to enter—or create—a specific canon. The wellness industry, especially as propagated through social media, somewhat cynically capitalizes on the collective yearn for calm in the midst of a turbulent world. Though Hopkins seems to genuinely believe in what he’s selling, it can’t help but come off as a bit opportunistic. Even its most touching passages don't keep Music For Psychedelic Therapy from betraying that idea. Through his own psychedelic experiments, Hopkins has clearly been meditating on becoming a guiding hand for his listeners' inward trips. However, sometimes thinking about an artistic goal especially hard takes you farther from realizing it.
Tracklist01. Welcome
02. Tayos Caves, Ecuador i
03. Tayos Caves, Ecuador ii
04. Tayos Caves, Ecuador iii
05. Love Flows Over Us In Prismatic Waves
06. Deep In The Glowing Heart
07. Ascending, Dawn Sky
08. Arriving
09. Sit Around The Fire feat. Ram Dass & East Forest