ISO50

The return of Jon Hopkins and his new album, Singularity, his first since 2013’s breakthrough, Immunity. Singularity is due for release on 4th May 2018. Along with news of Singularity, Hopkins has shared ‘Emerald Rush’ the first track to be released from the album.

Singularity begins and ends on the same note: a universe beginning, expanding, and contracting towards the same infinitesimal point. Where Immunity – his hypnotic breakthrough LP – charted the dark alternative reality of an epic night out, Singularity explores the dissonance between dystopian urbanity and the green forest. It is a journey that returns to where it began – from the opening note of foreboding to the final sound of acceptance.

Shaped by his experiences with meditation and trance states, the album flows seamlessly from rugged techno to transcendent choral music, from solo acoustic piano to psychedelic ambient. Its epic musical palette is visceral and emotionally honest: with a destructive opener full of industrial electronics and sonic claustrophobia and a redemptive, pure end on solo piano.

Exploring the connectivity of the mind, sonics and the natural world, Singularity reflects the different psychological states Hopkins experienced while writing and recording. It is a transformative trip of defiance from his initial sense of frustration at the state of the contemporary world to the ultimate conclusion that a true sense of peace and belonging can only come from nature.

Singularity is intended to be listened to in one sitting, as a complete body of work.

Singularity Tracklist

Singularity
Emerald Rush
Neon Pattern Drum
Everything Connected
Feel First Life
C O S M
Echo Dissolve
Luminous Beings
Recovery

SUPPORT VINYL

by jasonjko

As co-founder of spatial audio platform Envelop, pioneering producer and electronic musician Christopher Willits navigates the new universe of three dimensional music composition. The technology positions sound around the listener—full spatial orientation—whether inside an Envelop space or at home with ordinary headphones. A logical step for an artist whose output, spanning over 25 releases, has inched increasingly towards rich, immersive audiovisual experiences. His new project, Horizon, culminates a career-long journey for space, physicality, and serenity in music. Fitting, a decade after Willits marked Ghostly International’s first ever exclusively digital full-length, that he brings the label its first spatial audio album.

Willits began to share his diverse vision of ambient music in the early 2000s, releasing a string of critically acclaimed albums on the 12k label. The minimal sound introduced on those recordings remains at the core of his work: warm guitar tones woven into smooth, harmonic surfaces. Willits would expand the spectrum of his catalog next through collaboration, working with Ryuichi Sakamoto, Zach Hill (Death Grips), Taylor Deupree, and, for 2014 LP Opening, the whole band of Tycho.

In the period since Opening, Willits and friends successfully crowdfunded Envelop, allowing further development of its open source software, which integrates with production tools like Ableton Live as well as virtual reality platforms, and its 3D sound space locations for performance, research, workshops, and other non-profit projects. He also composed the original score for documentary The Art of Listening, and continues to lead music production and meditation classes in San Francisco.
Both Willits’ teachings and his mission with Envelop inform the deep ambient terrain of Horizon. Spanning one hour and thirty minutes, the album surrenders to the sentient fabric of time and space, and by design, aligns with sleep patterns, meditation, and other mindful practices. This is slow music, mapped to surround listeners whether in states heightened or muted. Space, literally and figuratively, to reflect in.

The innovative 3D mix is evident within the first sweeping, spherical pan of “Comet” (access to Envelop’s software or spaces not required). As one orbits, on occasion the panoramic view touches down to the surface by way of ambisonic field recordings, like the Peruvian Amazon at night on “Return” and the Hawaiian ocean waves of “Waipio.”

This weightless motion—shifting between gaseous and textural, macro and micro—offers a unique and transcendent proprioceptive experience. Listeners are ushered through atmospheres with indeterminate length, breadth and depth. It is as if we are at once above, below, within, and alongside the skylines of sound.

SUPPORT DIGITAL

I’ve been waiting for the full album stream to share this release with you but I got antsy, you need to hear this release. Future lush dance music that opens up and tunnels down through virtual pipes and opens in spaces we’ve never seen, sooo happy to have him on Ghostly.

FULL ALBUM STREAM RIGHT NOW @ Hype Machine

As half of Teengirl Fantasy, Logan Takahashi is best known for making glassy, expansive tracks. On his debut solo album NoGeo, however, he creates an intimate world of fertile, furtive rhythms. Throughout the album, techno-tinged patterns unfurl with zeal and digital melodies slowly rise and fall. If the music of Teengirl evokes widescreen, technicolor club scenes, NoGeo is a zoomed-in study of timbre, rhythm, and melody. “I started a lot of these tracks almost as etudes for myself,” Takahashi explains. “I was trying to draw on my experiences both from the last few years of my life working with TGF and from my musical experiences beforehand.” Takahashi grew up studying classical violin as a child and attended Oberlin Conservatory out of which TGF was born. “There are many things that I still either use or try and consciously reject from my musical upbringing and this was a way for me to explore some of that.”

Much of NoGeo was composed using Elektron’s Monomachine, which contributes to its minimalist aesthetic. There’s a uniformity to the tracks on NoGeo; though each has its own distinct, vibrant shape, all of them are cut from the same cloth—built on a sturdy rhythmic foundation that’s ornamented with buoyant candescent, sounds. “People talk a lot about borderlessness in dance music, and indeed I’ve always been most drawn to music that exists in or a works to create new grey areas,” Takahashi explains. “From the late ‘80s Japanese Neo Geo genre to the early ‘00s Brooklyn tabletop electronics scene, I’ve always been inspired by the notion of being able to create your own vocabulary.

As Takahashi points out, the album’s title is a nod to the musical style that Ryuichi Sakamoto spearheaded, one that fused Japanese and Western influences. Sometimes that influence was direct: the track “Kazoku Ogawa” was inspired by Takahashi uncovering a box of lost letters written by his grandfather containing family secrets from Japan. Others, like the somber, quietly cruising “Rekr,” simply use the idea of obscuring borders as an abstract starting point. “There’s an idea that I’ve been pretty inspired by for the past 5 or 6 years, and it’s the idea of viewing technology and computers as ‘organic,’” he says of the thought-process behind “Rekr.” “We normally think of ‘technology’ and ‘organic’ as two separate things, but computers are made of crystals and metals and magnets from the earth. That idea is interesting to me.”

Binding everything is Takahashi’s steady hand and clear musical voice. While each track has its own distinct, vibrant shape, there’s a oneness to NoGeo; it is the sound of Takahashi standing on his own for the first time.

Support CREAMSICLE COLORED VINYL

gan Takahashi