Jon Hopkins

“Nothing competes with the buzz of making your own record.”

“I've tried to do every album in a different style, which is why I tend to leave a fair bit of time between each one.”

“I'm a massive catastrophist by nature.”

“There's never been a time when there hasn't been ritualistic dancing, and I think clubbing is our modern incarnation of that.”

“The first thing I remember hearing was just the dance music that was in the charts when I was growing up. I don't remember many of the names of specific tracks - they were just kind of early acid house things.”

“For me, the most important thing is to keep everything moving very fast, so when I have an idea, I can realize it and make it audible as soon as possible.”

“I'm not someone who can just be paid to play keyboards on songs. I tried to do it - I needed the money, but it made me really unhappy and ill to be doing it.”

“Meditation is a regular part of my day, every day.”

“Writing music - particularly music without lyrics - calls almost exclusively on the subconscious.”

“I did classical music when I was a teenager, but the experience of performing a classical concert felt too frighteningly pristine for me to continue with it.”

“Meditation gives you back one or two sleep cycles every time you do it. Do it every day and it goes quite a long way towards helping insomnia.”

“My first ever show in America was opening for Coldplay at Madison Square Garden. Nobody in that audience could have known who I was. It was almost like it was an accident, like I was in someone else's dream.”

“When you sit there doing a film score for three months there's no time to experiment.”

“I remember having a 7-inch Depeche Mode single when I was ten and really loving that.”

“I would never advocate anyone doing anything without educating themselves and finding out exactly what they're in for.”

“I love exploring the hypnotic elements of music, and because of that there are very long tracks on 'Immunity.'”

“Sometimes I hear records that are being recorded at the absolute highest quality, and I just don't like the sound of it.”

“I don't have a huge amount of gear, but on the software side, I have a number of plug-in chains that act as abstracted versions of real instruments.”

“If I've made something really serene... well, if everything is like that, it's like having too much icing on your cake. You need something else under it, some kind of grounding. It's like if you're making a film, you can't have only happy moments, or else they become meaningless.”

“It's great to do something that makes your brain just switch to a different mode, and music can do that really powerfully.”