Jon Hopkins

“You don't make this kind of music expecting to have to do TV press and stuff like that. I don't mind doing it, but it's a fairly underground type of music. You do it for the love of the music more than being a star or anything.”

“I went to a hypnotherapist and learned how to hypnotize myself and explored orthogenic training, how to relax each part of your body.”

“I was drawn to music from a super early age. At school, my ego co-opted it to some degree and I would use it to gain some sort of social credibility.”

“I don't believe in getting a lot of new gear all the time, so I get very deeply into one instrument and use it for many years.”

“Sometimes I think elements of 'Open Eye Signal' are better live. I do this really crazy stuff at the end, but I don't know if it'd translate well into recording. It would probably sound a bit too extreme.”

“It's really important for me to have a record which has a strong narrative feel to it.”

“Making music has always had a therapeutic effect on me.”

“If you're a traveling artist, you probably experience insomnia at some point. You need things to be the right temperature, the right light... it's essential.”

“Well, I like the idea of seeing every piece of music as fluid. I see the tracks as places almost, structures you can inhabit and explore.”

“Music is an expression, a deep-seated feeling.”

“When I did 'Immunity,' even though I did a film score at the beginning and also at the end, I was left uninterrupted during the middle bit. I got a good year of just writing and focusing. That, to me, is when I make the best stuff.”

“For me, the score is one of the main characters of a film.”

“I prefer a long day of starting in the morning over working late into the night.”

“What kind of music keeps its relevance? That's why I purposely try and avoid any particularly current trends in electronic music. I do actively stay away from the most popular rhythms of the moment. In six weeks' time, those will sound out-of-date.”

“I do believe there's a human right to experiment with your consciousness, as long as you're harming no one else.”

“It sounds a bit pretentious, but I'm never really conscious of what I'm doing musically.”

“The process of repeating a rhythm while it gently evolves has an incredible effect on the brain, or on mine anyway.”

“What do I call my music? Beats with melodies.”

“The track 'Open Eye Signal,' when you hear that choir sound come in, that's actually me singing but sped up and with huge reverb and overlayered harmonies.”

“I love that tension between machine sounds and organic sounds, and also the contrast between abrasive sounds and soft sounds.”