There’s a smoothness and a simplicity to that early sketch which is nothing something I am looking for … nothing I ever do in the early stages ever makes it to the end … the first things you do are only there to caputre some kind of spark or some kind of spirit … you take a few days away and feel you want to be sick.
…
So the whole result of that week of sketching those first ideas has result in one sound which will be the seed which I am going to plant … Basically I built something in order so I can destroy it and then something more interestingly can grow out of it.
🎧 Jon Hopkins – Luminous Beings (Song Exploder)
Jon Hopkins is an electronic music producer whose been nominated twice for the UK’s Mercury Prize. Along with his frequent collaborator, Brian Eno, he co-produced Coldplay‘s Grammy-award winning album, Viva la Vida. In May 2018, Jon Hopkins released his fifth album, Singularity. It was named Best New Music by Pitchfork. In this episode, Jon Hopkins takes apart the song “Luminous Beings,” which was inspired in part by the meditative and therapeutic effects of psilocybin, the psychedelic compound found in magic mushrooms. Jon talks about his own experience with drug, and how it shaped this song. He also details the less magical moments where he hated the music was he making, and had to destroy it as part of the creative process.
Jon Hopkins reflects upon the dangers of the first ideas and building something to destroy it:
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