jon hopkins says...

During his recent visit for Luminous Sydney, as part of Vivid Sydney, UK electronic aficionado, Jon Hopkins, took some time out from his Playhouse shows and Sydney sight seeing to meet with Kluster’s Editor-In-Chief, Kat Hartmann. While discussing all aspects of his decade-long career, it became apparent Hartmann had been fooled by some rogue clips of his older material, currently circulating on YouTube. Hopkins respectfully wanted to make it clear that none of the David Attenborough, nature-documentary-esque videos are his. Especially the one with the “fucking penguins” walking through it. So please don’t be fooled by the fan-boy creations, as we were. We find the interview is best read with Hopkin’s pleasantly polite London accent in mind.

Kat Hartmann: These days we are seeing more and more classically trained musicians move into the electronic realm (Sydney duo, The Presets, is one example that springs to mind). As a child you studied classical piano, what is the connection between classical and electronic music, both within your music and in a broader sense.

Jon Hopkins: I don’t apply much thought to it really. I always approach music by combining ideas, by combining things I like, wanting to hear things that don’t normally go together. That thought of sticking heavy electronica over violin and piano to see what happens; that is what this album [Insides] came from.

KH: After finishing your training at the Royal College of Music you got your start playing keys and touring with Imogen Heap’s band. What was that transition like and how did the later transition to producing come about?

JH: That first transition was great. The classical piano thing was something I fell into. It was great because you learn good finger technique and you are able to realise ideas you are having about music, but really, I never wanted to be a pianist, I wanted to make electronic music. When I joined Imogen’s [Heap] band it was great. When you are 17 and you are touring in a band you think, ‘this is all I am going to do, this band is going to be it’. Where, in fact, we only lasted for a year and a half. Then I was out there, trying to figure out what I was going to do next. I did some session work, started writing and then did my first album in ’99. From there it all just slowly built up.

KH: I am a bit of a David Holmes fan. Can you indulge me for a minute and tell me about some of the work you did for him?

JH: Oh yeah, he is great actually. I think that was some time in 2007. I went over to his studio in Belfast – he’s got a lovely studio – and we just threw ideas about and wrote loads of stuff. He’s got a lovely grand piano so we miked that up and had a few days writing. He did a great remix for me and is helping me out with my London show – doing some DJ-ing – so it’s good times. He is a lovely guy.

KH: Great pairing. You have been dubbed a ‘self-taught studio wizard’ by some (including your own bio writer). Is this an accurate tag? If so, how did you manage to rise to the lofty height of studio wizardry all on your own?

JH: Oh right [laughs]! Just time really. I am not saying I have risen to those heights, or any kind of wizardry at all, but I don’t personally believe in being taught about machines, I think you should just learn by trial and error, and by time. I have been using some of these things for 15 years I guess. Certain synths I have had for a very long time, they evolve with you. New technologies pretty much enable you to do anything you like these days. You can make any sound you like. I think the best way to do it is just to keep on doing it.

KH: I recently read a review that described Insides as your single most aggressive release to date. I had a little trouble partnering ‘aggressive’ with your music – even when used as comparison of Insides to your other albums. Am I missing something?

JH: It’s half and half really; it’s supposed to be a record of two halves. The first half has some really heavy aggression in it. To me it represented the urban living: the cold, the English winters on London streets; dubstep; and the things that have been going on around where I live – the clubs that I have been going to, industrial stuff, dirt and gloom. The title track is the heaviest track. It’s the most up-to-date representation of my thoughts on living in London. After the fifth track it calms down. It goes off on a more idealistic tangent, to far more pastoral sounds – the countryside – more natural with a lot more piano.

KH: I’m of the understanding that Insides was written over three years - a few tracks here, a few more there. What effect did that disconnected process have on the continuity of the album?

JH: It was unavoidable but I really think it helped. What I did in the end was devote three solid months to bringing them all up to the same, rough, place. The track ‘Wire’, for example, was actually written in 2005. Some of the others in 2006, one was written in 2007 and then the rest. If you have a few months away from a track you can get perspective on it. You can revisit and then instantly hear, ‘that’s crap’ and ‘that could be a lot better’ and ‘this doesn’t fit with that’, and you just have to accept it if that is all you can find time to do. So ultimately [extra time to revisit] makes it better. The plan with the next record is to go away somewhere for two months, somewhere really remote, do a composers residency somewhere. Do it all in one go and see how different it is. Then leave it for a couple of months and revisit for another month. The idea of starting a new album from scratch in my studio near my home is not appealing at the moment. It’s too intense; I’ll do it somewhere else.

KH: It sounds as if the whole ‘leaving and then revisiting’ is an important part of your process?

JH: Yeah, I think so. When I do a remix that I don’t have a chance to revisit there is always something about it that bothers me. I’ll hear it a few weeks later and think, ‘shit, if I’d just had that extra week to think about it and let it settle then I wouldn’t have put that sound to the left, I might have put it slightly more to the right.’ Or, ‘that bass is too quiet’.

KH: You have said before that Insides is predominantly a piano record, that most of it was written at the piano. Is that consistent with the writing process used in your earlier albums?

JH: No, my first and second albums were written and recorded in the houses I was living in; the first one was in my bedroom and the second was in the loft of the house I was staying in. I didn’t have the piano with me in the room and I couldn’t mic it up easily, but this time I had a proper studio space. I always end up writing with what I am surrounded by. If I have a new instrument [or] if I have the facility to record a piano properly then it is going to end up getting involved. Quite often I will swing around, and there it is. That is another reason I want to go away to record the next album because if I start the next one with a piano in the room it’s going to end up with a loads of piano on it again and I feel like I have covered that.

KH: The method you use to write arrangements for instruments other than the piano is rather contemporary. Can you tell me a little more about that process?

JH: For me it is all improvisation really. I will play the great string players I work with a line that I have thought of, that is based around their style, or based around the parts I have already written. Then when I have heard that line recorded I will make up the next line and do something with that. I don’t score or write anything down; I don’t really use any of those techniques. I can only really tell how I want the next line to sound when I have heard the one before so I layer them up that way.

KH: In a recent interview with Cyclic Defrost magazine you said that electronic music has to have some mystery and darkness to be affective. How do you apply that to your own sound?

JH: I did? [Laughs] What a profound comment. What did I say again?

KH: You sure did. You said that electronic music has to have some mystery and darkness to be affective…

JH: To me it’s about the contrast. It can’t be purely light and it can’t be telling you, ‘be happy’ or ‘relax’ or ‘feel excited’. There should be some hidden depths. Just like any music, if it is linear then it doesn’t really mean much. If you can present a slightly evil side, then follow it by presenting a beautiful side, they work off each.

KH: Can you tell me a little about the recent Coldplay tour that you supported? What was that like as a new experience?

JH: Pretty crazy. I had never toured before. It’s 15 000 people a night and you’re playing this weirdo type of music that Coldplay crowds are not used to, but they were very welcoming – which obviously helped a lot for me! The effect it has had is that now I have done pretty much the hardest touring you can do. When I say it’s hard, it’s lovely as well - you get treated well - but it’s ‘hard’ as in: you are doing a lot of shows and it is very nerve racking. It has since had the effect of completely breaking me in to that. Now I just love playing. I feel like I can really relax a lot and not get so nervous because it doesn’t get any harder than going on stage at Madison Square Garden; that was the first show. We did a little one at Brixton Academy in London and then that was it. The first show in America was in the most enormous place! It was the wrong way around really… my kind of crowds are 2am club spots and that is where I am the most comfortable. I can enjoy that so much now. There is none of the negative. It’s all just fun really.

KH: The relationship between light, image and sound seems to be an omnipresent part of your creative output. In the video for ‘Light Through The Veins’ you seem to be exploring this relationship through the use of a developing - then receding – visual, and the ocular aspect is an intrinsic part of your live show. Why is that?

JH: I commissioned that animation. I had seen something on this animators website a friend of mine was working with. I saw it; I looked at it and thought, ‘that would be amazing with this track’ so we worked with it and had it adapted to fit the song. It just looks like the music to me, I can’t explain why. The live show incorporates animations that we licensed from this guy called Vince Collins, who’s an amazing hippy animator from the 60s and 70s. They are so psychodelic, hand-drawn, amazing. I love the combination of high-tech modern music with really creepy, scratchy animation. I really like the two things together so we had them all cut up and synched to the music. It opens it [the music] up a lot. Particularly for the Coldplay tour. My record wasn’t even out and I was playing new music to people who, physically, could have never heard it before. I think if you can see something then you can relate more to it. If it was just me up there then it would have been very hard to keep their attention because they are not especially an electronic audience, so it’s a bit different. Now it has just evolved with the set and has become part of the set. An audiovisual show is a good thing; it’s like another sense you’re filling.

KH: How has progressing technology aided you in your live performances?

JH: Amazingly. I don’t use particularly new software to write with but to play live, there is a program, Ableton, that really allows you to follow trains of thought live, to change structures as you go and to really respond to what kind of mood the crowd is in. You can go, ‘this is a really raving night, everyone is dancing already, let’s ram it up’. Or you can do the exact opposite if everyone is sitting and listening. Or, you can do what I did the other night which was drink too much before the show and play a very ravey set to a seated audience [laughs]. But they were into it, it was fine. I don’t think they had much choice though, because that was what we were doing!

KH: Maybe it is just the subject matter you choose to montage in your videos – that some of them have a David Attenborough-esque documentary aesthetic to them…

JH: [Interrupting] No, no, no, those aren’t my videos. Those are all internet, home made videos. It needs to be made very clear, because we’ve had this happen a lot. I have one video, and that is the ‘Light Through The Veins’, then there is the animation one. It’s terrible, because the Luminous site, I think, had put up links to these videos that were made, with fucking penguins walking, and sunsets, and space shuttles and I thought, ‘you are joking?’ [laughs] The images in the album: that is how I see it, which have nothing to do with nature. Domino [record label] have a video channel and they have got the proper ones up there. It’s just so embarrassing. You hear the album and you know it is not about David Attenborough-style imagery. It’s nothing to do with animals! I mean, I love animals but… [laughs] So maybe you can put a bit about that in...

KH: I certainly will since I made that mistake too!

JH: I just get a bit worried because it’s not the first time. All those [fake videos] are for older songs. No one has done it to the new album yet so I think Domino have a system wherein all there music is listed to them. You can’t put it up. They have dealt with that. So it will just be the first two albums. But this is the thing, particularly the album from ’99, I was not thinking about ‘chill out’ or ‘relaxation’. To me they were just songs – that is all they were. It is really annoying because I have never tried to be relaxing. That album was just peaceful because I wasn’t enjoying my life at the time, so I was trying to make an escapist album. Now I am having fun.

KH: That’s interestingthat you say that because I have seen you described as ‘chill out’ many times and have always been interested in reading your responses to this definition.

JH: Yes, it is very hard because, unless you put in a great big pounding beat, it’s meant to relax people. It’s not that, you’re telling a story or you are trying to get some kind of emotional reaction. Relaxation is what you get when you go for a massage.

KH: David Holmes is a very prominent example of a musician who is often mislabelled in that way.

JH: Really? Ok, well that helps [laughs].


KH: How was it that you and Brian Eno first began working together?

JH: It was actually quite a random thing. There was guitarist called Leo Abrahams who I’ve been friends with for years and share a studio space with. He was playing guitar in a guitar shop – he was testing out instruments – and Brian just happened to be in the room. Leo hadn’t seen him but Brian was so captivated by what Leo was playing that he introduced himself. About a year later he called him up and invited him into the studio. Leo played him some of my stuff and he was really keen to jam, so we had a jam in about 2003. We’ve done lots of stuff with him since then.

KH: Then that became the Coldplay connection?

JH: Yeah.

KH: You said before the shows that you were looking forward to having a reason to go inside the Opera House. Was the experience everything you thought it would be?

JH: Yeah! I haven’t been in the main hall yet. We spent all of Friday, Saturday and Sunday in there [the Playhouse] but I haven’t been in the main entrance yet so I really need to look around a bit more. I’ve only been in the stage door, around to the Playhouse and that is all I have seen so far. The crew were brilliant and the sound was amazing so it was lovely. I really like this city. I have been here before but it is nice to spend a bit more time here and not just be leaving straight away.

jon hopkins