JON HOPKINS

The trajectory of Jon Hopkins, like his sound, has been ascendant. It has also been a course rich with the creative relationships and experiences that make one envious (Brian Eno, Coldplay) and admiring of the dedicated talent that attracted them. A prodigious piano player from the start—and I don’t know why it’s always so cool to learn of a classically trained pianist using that acuity to locate alternative style—the Surrey-born English producer has adapted the synthesized composition of his favorite records growing up to pattern his own beaming transmission.

One could argue quite convincingly that Hopkins’ fifth album, , was the finest overall record of 2018, just on the basis of the technical execution of an emotional vision. You step back, or rather out into its acreage, and marvel at the delivery on all counts of what draws people into what they’re hearing. A manifesto on the interdependence of growth and destruction, and crucially inspired by medicinal experimentation with psilocybinreside. Look to the video for the galvanizing track “Emerald Rush”—placing yourself in the role of the protagonist bounding and somersaulting through animated forests and night skies is a proper analogy to the experience of the full album. Hopkins builds grand set pieces of life and fantasy, where the subtlety of assembly reveals engineering on a whole other level.