Top 66 Jon Hopkins Quotes

Sometimes I think elements of ‘Open Eye Signal’ are better live. I do this really crazy stuff at the end, but I don’t know if it’d translate well into recording. It would probably sound a bit too extreme.

I’ve always been obsessed with contrast in records, and using harsher elements to make the quieter ones more powerful.

When I was 23, I felt like I was further back than when I was 21. After two solo albums for this small indie label Just Music, they’d gotten no real profile. So I kind of turned away from the solo thing a bit.

I’m not keen on interfering with nature; I don’t want to edit my genome.

I always liked the idea of shaving the back of my head and getting a tattoo of my own face there so that, whichever way I was looking, I could freak people out.

When I did ‘Immunity,’ even though I did a film score at the beginning and also at the end, I was left uninterrupted during the middle bit. I got a good year of just writing and focusing. That, to me, is when I make the best stuff.

Whenever I’ve improved, gone up a level in sound-making, it’s been because I’ve done an album.

Writing music – particularly music without lyrics – calls almost exclusively on the subconscious.

Sometimes I hear records that are being recorded at the absolute highest quality, and I just don’t like the sound of it.

Music is an expression, a deep-seated feeling.

As a teenager, you don’t really have restraint.

I have always been interested in incorporating real places into the music I make. Bringing the outside into the controlled world of recorded sound just gives life and physicality.

A night out isn’t just chaos and hedonism. It can be beautiful as well and there’s a sadness to the end of it.

Well, I like the idea of seeing every piece of music as fluid. I see the tracks as places almost, structures you can inhabit and explore.

I got this pretend grass stuff called LazyLawn on my roof. Now I can go out on my terrace in bare feet, and it looks exactly like a lawn. This is what science should be for.

If I’ve made something really serene… well, if everything is like that, it’s like having too much icing on your cake. You need something else under it, some kind of grounding. It’s like if you’re making a film, you can’t have only happy moments, or else they become meaningless.

I would never advocate anyone doing anything without educating themselves and finding out exactly what they’re in for.

Nothing competes with the buzz of making your own record.

I love truly forward-thinking music, and I’m not even sure I’d describe my work as that, even.

I’m not someone who can just be paid to play keyboards on songs. I tried to do it – I needed the money, but it made me really unhappy and ill to be doing it.

I do believe there’s a human right to experiment with your consciousness, as long as you’re harming no one else.

Transcendental meditation in particular is very useful in terms of unlocking those deeper parts of the subconscious where ideas are floating.

When you’ve got hardly any equipment, very little money and no access to any information, your sound is very much dictated by you, your setup and what you’re listening to. Nothing more.

I learned over the years to trust that the subconscious is going to provide guidance.

It’s great to do something that makes your brain just switch to a different mode, and music can do that really powerfully.

I think I took eight or nine months to make ‘Immunity.’ I just focused on mainly that, and it felt amazing.

Maybe I’m just stubborn about learning new things – I can’t stand learning new programs – but any sound I can imagine, I can make with SoundForge. And I’m using the old version, like 4.5 from 1999. I use it for every sound.

The process of repeating a rhythm while it gently evolves has an incredible effect on the brain, or on mine anyway.

I’m more akin to things like Sigur Ros, Mogwai, possibly. But when I’m making solo electronic music, techno stuff is just the most exciting form of rhythm.

Meditation gives you back one or two sleep cycles every time you do it. Do it every day and it goes quite a long way towards helping insomnia.

I love exploring the hypnotic elements of music, and because of that there are very long tracks on ‘Immunity.’

Music has always been so integral to my life. It’s always been my work and my passion.

I love starting a track in one place and not knowing where it’s going to end up.

Well, I don’t really use MIDI that much. But I do record audio around me a lot, and just layer it up and see what effect it has, without any aforethought.

My own personality is fairly optimistic and generally very happy, but like everyone else I’ve been through difficult stuff, particularly in my teenage years, where I experienced enough melancholia to feed any number of electronic records.

If you’re a traveling artist, you probably experience insomnia at some point. You need things to be the right temperature, the right light… it’s essential.

You don’t make this kind of music expecting to have to do TV press and stuff like that. I don’t mind doing it, but it’s a fairly underground type of music. You do it for the love of the music more than being a star or anything.

Making music has always had a therapeutic effect on me.

I think there’s a spiritual element to dancing in general. There’s a reason why in every culture, dancing seems to be in our DNA.

My first ever show in America was opening for Coldplay at Madison Square Garden. Nobody in that audience could have known who I was. It was almost like it was an accident, like I was in someone else’s dream.

I was always fascinated particularly with synths: how they looked and stuff that when you’re a kid you’re like this is the most incredible thing in the world just to play.

As soon as I finish meditating, I get a beautiful feeling of expanded consciousness. When I’m in this headspace I can make so much progress in my writing.

A lot of my creative ideas begin in the pub, talking through possibilities with collaborators.

I was drawn to music from a super early age. At school, my ego co-opted it to some degree and I would use it to gain some sort of social credibility.

I’ve always lived in my head, which is very easy to do when you live and work in a city.

What kind of music keeps its relevance? That’s why I purposely try and avoid any particularly current trends in electronic music. I do actively stay away from the most popular rhythms of the moment. In six weeks’ time, those will sound out-of-date.

I did classical music when I was a teenager, but the experience of performing a classical concert felt too frighteningly pristine for me to continue with it.

You can’t allow your creative sessions to be dominated by miniscule editing processes.

Sometimes you can just record anything and slow it down hugely and you’ll find all these hidden notes and frequencies that match up really nicely.

To try and create a transcendent state through music has always been the intention.

You can only make the best thing you can make, and if it offends purists, or angers certain critics, you can only have done your best.

Overall, ‘Singularity’ has a certain lightness to it compared to ‘Immunity.’ It’s less closed off; it doesn’t have that claustrophobic sound.

I just love switching stuff off and going for a run, or sitting down and eating cake.

It’s extraordinary to hear from people who are bereaved, or gone through a divorce, and they still take the time to tell me how a certain track or album helped them through tough times, or kept them sane.

That’s the thing with electronic music, you set up systems to bring in an accident, to bring in quirks you didn’t choose, but you still will have had to set up systems.

No, I’m a quite big believer in not being in the studio if I don’t feel like being in there.

I don’t believe in getting a lot of new gear all the time, so I get very deeply into one instrument and use it for many years.

When you sit there doing a film score for three months there’s no time to experiment.

I’m a massive catastrophist by nature.

I’ve learnt over the years to always be thinking of titles and ideas that I try to put across with just a couple of words. It’s the difficult part when you’re writing things that are basically abstract.

The first thing I remember hearing was just the dance music that was in the charts when I was growing up. I don’t remember many of the names of specific tracks – they were just kind of early acid house things.

Your music essentially reflects everything you do, everything you’ve been through, in the deepest part of you.

I’m a bit snobbish about breakfast: eggs benedict, or eggs royale, or something like that. Or just some really amazing, proper brown toast with smoked salmon, lemon, and black pepper. That’s a great start to the day.

For me, the most important thing is to keep everything moving very fast, so when I have an idea, I can realize it and make it audible as soon as possible.

I love that tension between machine sounds and organic sounds, and also the contrast between abrasive sounds and soft sounds.

I remember having a 7-inch Depeche Mode single when I was ten and really loving that.