Today Jon Hopkins shares a new release, “Singing Bowl (Ascension)”, the first in a new series of ‘Meditations’ which is available to stream now.
To create this piece, Hopkins recorded a range of vibrations created by a 100 year-old singing bowl found in an antique shop in Delhi. He then fed these into a laptop running a simple, generative system that triggered the hits and drones at random. This would allow synchronicity to play a central part in the composition process, and remove as much ‘thinking’ as possible from the writing. An earlier version of this generative piece was used as a sound installation at last year’s Helsinki Arts Festival.
Hopkins on the creation of “Singing Bowl (Ascension)”:
“Like so many people I felt pretty paralysed by this situation when it first unfolded. All my plans for the year were cancelled, and everything felt so weird and dreamlike. But gradually I found I wanted to create something - to find peace and perspective through making music, as I have always done.
It felt beautifully pure to just use one acoustic sound source, and no synths. It was liberating to write something without playing anything on a keyboard - to avoid the familiar diatonic scale for the first time, and thus avoid any of my own conditioned playing habits. There was a magic in setting this generative system in motion then just letting the vibrations of this bowl create their own world. I listened to harmonics layering on top of harmonics for hours and was transported.”
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“Singing Bowl (Ascension)” is premiered as part of a specially curated 24-hour long playlist for Spotify. Designed with deep meditation experiences in mind, the piece perfectly fits into Jon’s transcendent selections. In addition to the playlist, Hopkins will be taking over Spotify UK's Instagram on 7th May, where he'll take part in a Q&A with fans, and share exclusive content.
Listen to the playlist here.
