Music For Psychedelic Therapy

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"Keep calm and relax" is what Jon Hopkins seems to have been telling us through his last few records. After the Meditations series, based on the sound of a Tibetan singing bowl, and the EP Piano Versions (both released in 2020), here he is again with an album that he says is “not ambient, classical or drone but has elements of all three”. The title says it all: Music for Psychedelic Therapy is a record for treating your psyche. And the artist accompanies it with listening tips: “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.”

The place in question is a cave in Ecuador called La Cueva de los Tayos, which has become legendary because of its perfectly polished megaliths and mysterious inscriptions. It was in these mystical tunnels that the idea for the album took shape in 2018. Jon Hopkins devotes a soberly titled triptych to them, Tayos Caves, Ecuador, which, over a tight 20 minutes, takes wing amid pouring rain and birdsong, and sets down again in a forest of drones. But the highlight of the piece is surely Sit Around the Fire, an eight-minute meditation guided by the famous American guru Ram Dass, Timothy Leary's travelling companion. This track was composed in collaboration with Portland producer East Forest, author of the 2019 audio guide Music for Mushrooms, who also recorded Ram Dass in Hawaii before his death in 2019. Could this mark a new path for the former student of the Royal College of Music in London? © Smaël Bouaici/Qobuz