Born in Kingston upon Thames in 1979, musician and producer Jon Hopkins studied piano on the junior division of the Royal School of Music. He performed keyboards for Imogen Heap earlier than releasing his solo debut album Opalescent in 2001. His subsequent albums embrace the Mercury-nominated Immunity, the Grammy-nominated Singularity and 2021’s Music for Psychedelic Remedy. His soundtrack for the 2010 film Monsters was nominated for an Ivor Novello award and he has collaborated on varied tasks with Brian Eno and Coldplay. Hopkins lives in London. His seventh album, Ritual, is out on 30 August by way of Domino.
1. TV
How to Change Your Mind (Netflix)
This sequence, primarily based on a e book by Michael Pollan, is a information to the brand new science behind psychedelics that has emerged after many years of bans. These medicines have been an important device in my life – I made an album impressed by them – and I really feel Pollan is an ideal bridge builder, approaching the topic in a rational and meticulous manner. The sequence covers plenty of the identical floor because the e book, however you truly get to see and listen to folks whose lives have been reworked by medicines reminiscent of psilocybin, which might help with treatment-resistant despair and end-of-life care. It’s very transferring.
2. Bar
Verdant Schooners Beach Bar and Taproom, St Agnes beach, Cornwall
It is a very particular place. I turned aware of Verdant brewery a couple of years in the past – they make a hazy IPA that I really feel they do higher than every other brewery. Now they’ve opened a taproom overlooking a rare seashore in Cornwall, in a wild location that’s fairly laborious to get to. They’ve acquired all of the contemporary, unpasteurised Verdant beers on faucet, which is a dream, and there’s a tremendous pizza chef. Sitting there because the solar goes down, it appears like one of many best spots on Earth to have a beer.
3. Place
Esalen Institute, Big Sur, California
I’d heard about this place for a few years and was conscious that individuals like Ram Dass and Terence McKenna as soon as taught there. Then, throughout a month-long journey in California, I acquired to spend two days there – a buddy who grew up at Esalen took me. The institute has hot-spring baths the place you simply sit and soak for hours in water that’s extraordinarily wealthy in minerals. You will get massages on the deck with waves crashing beneath you and condors flying overhead. And you find yourself having a lot of fascinating conversations. I left feeling purified and fully current.
4. E-book
The Frank Book by Jim Woodring
A buddy confirmed me this e book once I was 18 or 19. It’d seem like a infantile comedian nevertheless it comes, I feel, from the identical place as plenty of David Lynch’s movies – it has a dreamworld logic that can not be put into phrases. The central character is a cat-like determine known as Frank who goes about his adventures, which are sometimes terrifying and freakish, however there are lovely moments as nicely. There’s an antagonist known as Whim, who has a head like a crescent moon. I as soon as confirmed it to somebody who mentioned: “Oh my God, I’ve seen that in my nightmares.”
5. Meals
The Old Airport Road Food Centre, Singapore
Every time I’d go to Australia on tour, I’d at all times cease in Singapore on the way in which residence to go and eat. This was the primary hawker centre I used to be taken to by pals who stay there, and it’s simply unbelievable. In Singapore these locations are rather more interesting than the flamboyant eating places. All of the stalls are run by individuals who have made only one dish for many years – Hainanese hen rice, or omelette with deep-fried oysters – and it’s only a fully excellent model. I’d eat this meals over a flowery meal any day.
6. Apply
This has been one of many largest forces of change in my life and it’s nice to see it changing into extra widespread – James Nestor’s e book Breath blew it open for lots of people. I used to be launched to breathwork by means of Kundalini meditation again in 2001 and later acquired into the Wim Hof methodology. Nowadays I primarily observe Patrick McKeown’s methods for downregulating the nervous system by means of lengthy, sluggish nasal respiratory. With breath you may management your state to fairly a tremendous diploma. It’s a easy, calming device to deal with the insanity of the fashionable period.
7. Music
That is an album that modified how I listened to music. It takes the type of a ceremonial expertise, maybe involving ayahuasca, and it makes use of plenty of area recordings. My buddy Dan performed it to me throughout a few of our personal medicinal experiences and I couldn’t imagine that somebody had managed to translate such a fancy factor into music. Once you lie there and take heed to the entire thing, notably if you happen to’re in an altered state of consciousness, you begin to realise that this man is type of a genius, a shamanic grasp, a one-off. It deserves to be heard.
