JON HOPKINS FEAT PURITY RING BREATHE THIS AIR

This is a really beautiful song. If I start with that, it makes me feel like everything I write from here on in will just be superfluous gumpf. Despite that, I'm gonna go on with it. Is that ok with you? Is it ok with me? I think so. Because, as I always say, good music deserves kind words. So if I go into raptures, that's ok. Think of it as a star-rating system, but with the quality of the words being the guiding light. Stars and numbers... that's for the NME and other things. Who needs words when you can just listen to a song and, instead of respecting the effort that goes into it, just say, "Mmmmyeah it's an 8/10, stick it up on the site, print it – NEXT!" Not my style.

Anyway. Sorry about that. Today we have Mr Jon Hopkins, a London-based producer, doing a song with pretty-vocal'd chill-step duo Purity Ring called 'Breathe This Air'. (I made up chill-step, but that just goes to show how silly genres are). Hopkins, on his Facebook, describes it as "A new version of Breathe This Air with vocals by Purity Ring" - the original is a much bassier, dancier affair. In the Purity Ring version, it's condensed, prettied up, ambientised and generally blooms in wonderful clouds of sound around your ears - it's a less abrasive sound, I guess. Let us listen.

Isn't it lovely? There are some lovely details at the beginning that really catch the ear. That gentle tinkling piano, the atmospheric noises of endless space, the reversed and spliced samples of the vocal that comes in quite soon, and - a small detail, but an important one for me - the skiffle of the snare drum at 0:29, a great live-drums-sounding technique that pops up throughout the song. The drums themselves are nice: glitchy, catchy, lovely. What Jon Hopkins seems to do is hold things back, giving you a lot of good sounding things but keeping stuff for later - like the lightly crunched modulated synth that hops in after about 1:25. It's this progressive sound that keeps your ears quite excited for what will come later. Brief synth glitches jut in like arrows from heaven.

The vocals from Purity Ring - the female half of the duo, obviously - are just perfect. They're treated carefully, like a rare bird; people always say that to hold a bird, it's a careful balance of not-too-much and not-too-little. This is just how these vocals are laid on the track, not over-produced, yet glittering with a seemingly unending reverb, touched with a little electronic autotune for stylistic purposes (or at least that's what I hear). As for the vocals themselves - what a voice. Beautiful. It's hypnotic.

This comes as a single from Jon Hopkins' 4th album, Immunity, out on Domino records. You can download it digitally on 23rd September.

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JON HOPKINS OPEN EYE SIGNAL [VIDEO]

You can do so much with electronic music. Well, I guess you can do a lot with acoustic instruments, but when you've got to the point of playing a guitar with a flute or something you should probably stop flogging that horse. True experimentalism happens with instruments mainly through electronic means. So imagine what you can do with a purely electronic sound. With a pioneering spirit and a lot of curiosity, playing around with electronic music must be second nature.

It seems so with London-based producer Jon Hopkins - the fact that he became a long time collaborator with Brian Eno (the so-called king of experimental electronic music), after Eno heard and liked his music, should tell you something at least. What it tells you, I dunno, but it told me that he must be good. And he is. Just listen to his new track 'Open Eye Signal'.

The track is mesmerising. It sucks you right into its groove, the relentlessly pulsating bass pushing it onwards and being the engine for the whirlpool which drags you further and further in. Hypno-electro. If that's a thing. Maybe it can be a thing. Anyway, the song builds up from its basic foundations, the slightly off-kilter beat mixing regular snare sounds with snares that sound as if they have been ripped open. Soon sheets of delicate ambient noise filter through the ruptured modulating main and provide the whole thing with a shining-gold atmosphere - lovely.

The track morphs in the last quarter of its duration into something dirtier, something with more teeth and less pretty ambience. The synth is messed around with, tussled, distorted, pulled this way and that, the percussion as good as disappears leaving a maraca sound to keep time. It's a very long outro, if you could call it that, but it is just as fabulous as the rest of the song.

If you liked this, I'm sure there will be more brilliance on Jon Hopkins upcoming album Immunity, out 3rd June on Domino.

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