Electronic producer Jon Hopkins has announced a new album, Music For Psychedelic Therapy, arriving November 12 via Domino. Today, he shares a deeply meditative lead single, “Sit Around The Fire,” which features the voice of the late guru Ram Dass. “It felt like time for a reset, to wait for music to appear from a different place,” Hopkins said of Music For Psychedelic Therapy, which follows 2018’s Singularity and was inspired by the artist’s time in the Tayos Caves of Ecuador.
Here’s what Hopkins had to say about his new single, which you can listen to above.
“‘Sit Around The Fire’ exists from one of the deep synchronicities that ushered this thing (Music For Psychedelic Therapy) into being. I was contacted by East Forest, who had spent some time with Ram Dass in Hawaii before he passed. He was given access to several lesser-heard talks from the 70s, and asked to set them to music. He sent me some starting points, including the beautiful choral vocals he recorded which open the piece. I put my headphones on and with Ram Dass’ voice inside my head, I sat at the piano and improvised. What you hear is the first thing that came out — it just appeared in response to the words.”
Hopkins added about the album:
“Music For Psychedelic Therapy is not ambient, classical or drone but has elements of all three. For me it’s a place as much as it is a sound. It works for the sober mind, but takes on a new dimension entirely when brought into a psychedelic ceremony. In my own psychedelic explorations testing this music, I found a quote I had read would keep coming to mind. ‘Music is liquid architecture, architecture is frozen music.’ I love this idea of music as something you inhabit, something that works on you energetically. In fact, it was while in that state that the title appeared to me. Psychedelic-assisted therapies are moving into legality across the world, and yet it feels like no one is talking about the music; the music is as important as the medicine.”
Check out the album’s tracklist:
1. “Welcome”
2. “Tayos Caves, Ecuador i”
3. “Tayos Caves, Ecuador ii”
4. “Tayos Caves, Ecuador iii”
5. “Love Flows Over Us In Prismatic Waves”
6. “Deep In The Glowing Heart”
7. “Ascending, Dawn Sky”
8. “Arriving”
9. “Sit Around The Fire” (with Ram Dass, East Forest)
Music For Psychedelic Therapy arrives 11/12 via Domino. Pre-order it here.