JON HOPKINS - SINGULARITY

1) Singularity; 2) Emerald Rush; 3) Neon Pattern Drum; 4) Everything Connected; 5) Feel First Life; 6) C O S M; 7) Echo Dissolve; 8) Luminous Beings; 9) Recovery

A makebelieve soundtrack for deep space exploration.

I bought Singularity in the wake of No Man's Sky. The game had seen its release a whole two years earlier, it has absolutely nothing to do with Jon Hopkins or this album and to be honest I've never played it myself because I don't care for endless craft-a-thons. But my partner did play it and I watched them sink hours into the game, and I do also love deep sci-fi and the concept of exploring unknown worlds - and above all I loved the soundtrack that 65daysofstatic had created for that game. The instrumental score captured so vividly and beautifully the striking, imagination-rich atmosphere of visiting alien landscapes and charting the marvels of the unknown, and though I never touched the game directly I was obsessed with the soundtrack and the endless images it conjured in my mind, based both on what I had seen from the game as well as similar media. I was eventually left craving more of where that soundtrack came from, something else that could capture the vast fascination of infinite space and its mysteries. The first time I heard excerpts from Singularity, I knew I had found it.

Musically Singularity and the No Man's Sky soundtrack are in most parts different beasts altogether. While both are atmospheric and electronic, 65daysofstatic come from a post-rock background and it shows in the dynamics of their score; meanwhile Hopkins is a full-time electronic producer, most famous for his brushes with ambient (and his Coldplay collaborations). What both works of music have in common however are their bold and dense soundscapes, so evocative of the science fiction realms that they intentionally tap into for inspiration (the celestial artwork for Singularity can't be a coincidence). The shimmering synths and propulsive percussions of Singularity would be at home in any self-respectic spacecraft, playing behind as you gaze through the window of your spaceship and watch the cosmos unfold. It sounds immense and above all immersive, towering over the listener through the speakers and laying out a sonic landscape ahead to giddily get lost within. The songs are frequently lengthy, culminating in a couple of grandstanding centrepieces stretching over ten minutes, and typically they sound like they should be soundtracking something - and it's likely that while you listen to it, combinations of scenery and memories from all kinds of appropriate media will race in your head. While the backbone of the songs is often in the colossal, high-BPM beats that keep them moving, Singularity is not really a dance album: its overall arrangements are within Hopkins' ambient realm, with glacial pianos, textural synth patterns and stargazing lead melodies taking the centre stage. The oft-contrasting drums keep it moving and alive though, adding a sense of urgency to what would perhaps otherwise be something that would pause the world to a still. Sometimes that contradiction is fantastic, sometimes it's maybe not needed, but I can at least understand what Hopkins was trying to whenever those enormous drum hits appear.

At its best Singularity is transportative. Particularly so in its second half, which forms a sequence of widescreen atmospheric heaven that carries me in my mind to brand new sights light years away from this modern mundanity. The haunting "Feel First Life" and its choirs, the escalating shimmer of "C O S M" and the ethereal minimalism of "Echo Dissolve" are peak nomansskycore, and the escalating run of resonant gorgeousness is capped by the album's grand 12-minute showcase "Luminous Beings" which flickers with trascendental grace and worry-free airlessness for as long as it pleases and you don't mind at all. It's music that is designed to take you away somewhere else entirely when it pours through your headphones, filling the air with a genuine sense of awe at its very best moments. It's a very bottom-loaded album though and whilst the first half is by no means a slog - and the appropriately name "Emerald Rush" in particular is the album's runaway hit and the perfect lead-in to grab the listener's attention - it does at times feel like a very long buid-up to where the album really starts hitting those sweet spots. You can really feel the 60-minute+ length of this sometimes, and the more time I spend with this the more I just want to hop into the evocative space of the second half.

I'd still recommend this in a heartbeat to any other likeminded spacefarers. During its high points Singularity captures that one hyper-specific yet vague thematic notion of sci-fi horizons so alluringly that you could be mistaken for thinking it's a real genre umbrella, and there's few works which creatively mine that concept so well.

Physically: Gatefold sleeve. The CD is stored in an inner slip which also has the credits printed on.