Jon Hopkins

Now THIS just might be amazing Out There. From Wimbledon, England. First became aware of electronic music hearing house on the radio at age 7 or 8. By 12, studying piano at the Junior Department of the Royal College of Music in London. Loving Ravel and Stravinsky.

As a teenager got crazy for acid house, early hardcore, grunge and electronica. At 14 he got his first computer, an Amiga 500. By 15 he had saved up enough money from winning piano competitions to buy a low-level professional Roland synth, and began creating.

Became an expert producer, renowned composer of film scores, remixer and longterm collaborator of no less than Brian Eno. And Coldplay. But it’s this new album, Immunity, that has really taken the cake to a whole new bakery. It takes an ambient aesthetic and makes 4/4 dance tunes – from soundtrack to dancefloor. It’s everyone’s favourite latenight beautiful epic soaring emotional instrumental album. It was made using physical, real-world sounds: anything from tapping a piano, drumming on the desk, salt and pepper shakers, the reverse alarm of a truck outside his studio, fireworks emanating from a nearby stadium, the rattle of a window frame at every kick drum hit. The random patterns of nature. This not only makes the album deeply personal to Hopkins, but is key to one of his main inspirations in recording it – the desire to slow down or alter the brainwaves to help us reach different states of mind, not just via music, but hypnosis too.

With a stated aim to see if this music might have just that effect on those who encounter it – self-hypnosis – Hopkins’ music feels like a trip inside his mind. Catch the 2am Friday night First Class Sleeper to Everywhere.