Jon Hopkins has shared his new single Singing Bowl, the first in a new meditation series. Talking about the single he said “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.
“I wanted to make something for the meditative mindset I found myself in, so I turned to some recordings I had made last year of an 100 year old singing bowl that was found in an antique shop in Delhi.
“I decided to restrict myself to using just this instrument and a laptop, and with this as a starting point, built a 21 minute meditation piece.
“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.”
The visuals for the video were made by Dan Tombs who shared how the visuals were made:
“I listened to the track on loop out in the sun with my eyes closed for about an hour, I could feel the sunlight on the back of my eyelids & could begin to see the sounds as glimmers of warm light dancing & resonating in my minds eye, that was the start of the concept. It was important to make something organic, yet mechanical to represent the physicality of the metal bowl, I set up a projector in my studio, a turntable, made some experiments filming through various glass objects. A purely software approach wouldn’t be fitting for this piece.
“Eventually it was clear that the perfect effect would come from a very slow motorised revolution, I used my Technics 1200 and a glass candle holder that used to belong to my Grandmother, combined with some generative fluids projected through the glass & filmed with a Macro lens. But using a postcard to modulate the light coming from the projector so I had a human input as well. After many takes and hours of filming in total darkness with just the light of the projector and a light smoke haze in my studio, I built up a library of videos, these were carefully edited into place to peak on each chime and dissipate as the bowl rings out.”
Jon Hopkins – “Singing Bowl (Ascension)”, out now on Domino Record Co.
The single also features in a 24 Hour Spotify Playlist Jon has put together which he started building a few years ago for himself and friends as a way of collecting and sharing ambient music he loved. “I’ve been using it for meditations and psychedelic journeys for ages. With everything that is happening right now this felt like the right time to make it public.”