- The UK synth whizz begins an extensive tour across North America.
- In a recent interview with The Guardian, Jon Hopkins likened his new album, Singularity, to the build, peak and release of a psychedelic experience. He's been vocal in the past about the value of transcendent experiences, from hallucinogenic mushrooms and controlled breathing to freezing baths and meditation. This theme often runs strong in his live shows.
Hopkins' performance at Chicago's Thalia Hall, a restored and redesigned 1892 opera house that became a concert venue in 2013, began an 11-show tour across North America. Daniel Avery was on support, holding it down with a set that ranged from hypnotizing techno to a drawn-out passage of lulling ambient. Hypnotic visuals were projected onto a draped screen about a third into the two-hour set. Occasionally, when beams of light flashed across his setup, you could see him pulsing along.
Hopkins' set had more of a narrative arc, aided by high-end visuals that ranged between the real, the surreal and the scientific. A lot of the images concerned motion: a character skating through an urban environment, molecules dancing in a sky, a cartoon boy falling into the cosmos. Hopkins' face was lit by the ghostly glow of two laptops on stage, while his arms and fingers danced with elegant knob twists and button hits.
Beginning with the synth swells of "Singularity," the album's opening track, Hopkins filled his 75-minute set with dozens of builds and releases, framed around heaving kicks, skittering rhythms and melodic synth lines that kept fracturing and reforming. You could hear the influence of his classical piano training. The music, like the visual story behind him, was constantly moving. Ideas came and went, never sticking around for too long, and no two passages sounded identical. Throughout his career, whether working solo or alongside the likes of Brian Eno and Coldplay, Hopkins has constantly reinvented himself in the studio. That same restless ethos applies to his live performances.
Photo credit /
Kris Lori