Jon Hopkins performing live. Photo ©Alexsandr Zykov. Used under CC-BY-SA 2.0 license.
Jon Hopkins’ musical exploits range far and wide, starting with being a member of Imogen Heap’s backing band, through to producing the 2011 Mercury Prize nominated album Diamond Mine with Scottish singer-songwriter King Creosote.
His solo output spans many different styles, but is united in being primarily electronic with his classically-trained piano skills lilting over the top. Today’s recommendation comes from 2009’s Insides, arguably his most diverse sounding record.
Vessel is the album’s second track, and it’s an epic musical journey indeed. It starts off unassumingly with swelling atmospheric noise, evocative of a violin bow on a metallic plate. Small glitches and rustles swing between the speakers before a piano line is introduced.
It’s not long after this that the track’s demo prowess becomes clear, as a deep, thick bassline is suddenly leaps forth from your speakers or headphones. This tests your system’s range in a number of ways. Most notably, the volume of the piano shouldn’t reduce as the bass kicks in. Occasionally systems prioritise the low-end and the high frequencies over the midrange to give a perception of both bass and detail, but this would lead to the piano becoming obscured, ruining what I believe is this track’s strongest musical element.
As the track continues, more and more new sounds are brought in over the piano, including a violin, and you should be able to pick out all of these as the volume swells. Off the top of my head I can’t think of another track that has so much texture in everything from the deepest to the highest sounds, which is why I always use it to decipher subtle differences between set-ups.
If you’ve had a listen why not let us know what you think in the comment box? We’re especially eager to hear if you have any tunes that you find particularly good at showing off your system.
This track is available to download in lossless FLAC format from both Bleep and Qobuz (N.B. Qobuz is in French and uses Euros!).
