jon hopkins / interview <

July 2019 / COMPUTER MUSIC / 79

The Grammy-nominated producer talks

Eno, real pianos and finding the sweet spot

between filth and weightlessness...

As a young lad growing up just outside

London, Jon Hopkins decided he was

going to learn to play the drums. But, as he

sat down behind the kit, he realised there

was something wrong.

“The kick drum sounded weird,” he

remembers. “Every time I played it, it sounded

different. I didn’t want that. I wanted every kick

to sound the same. I wanted a kick drum like the

one that I heard on the radio... on songs like

MARRS’ Pump Up The Volume and D-Mob’s We

Call It Acieed.

“I didn’t know it at the time, but it wasn’t

really a drum kit that I was interested in. It was a

drum machine.”

Although the 39-year-old Hopkins now

regrets hanging up his ‘sticks’ – “it would be

brilliant to play live drums on stage!” – he

acknowledges that this natural affinity with

electronically-generated sound overshadowed

his early years. He was a gifted, self-taught

classical pianist, but could never really escape

the lure of synthesisers... and the giddy joy of

audio experimentation.

“I suppose it was a big hint of what was to

come,” says Hopkins. “A musical signpost to

where I was headed.”

At 17 and straight out of college, Hopkins was

already employed as a touring keyboard player,

but also working on a bunch of tunes that

became his 2001 debut, Opalescent. Although it

was, for all intents and purposes, an

underground album, it had an immediate

impact, and Hopkins spent the next few years

hanging out with the likes of Brian Eno, David

Holmes and Coldplay – he was co-producer on

their 2008 album Viva la Vida.

There were soundtrack albums (the 2010 Brit

sci-fi movie, Monsters), collaborations (the

Mercury-nominated Diamond Mine with King

Creosote) and American success for his 2009

album, Insides.

As he continued to branch out, critics

struggled to find a convenient label for Hopkins’

JON

HOPKINS

Photo: Steve Gullick