Insides

Jon Hopkins is a musical shapeshifter: a composer, pianist and a self-taught studio wizard. He makes affecting, bold electronic music using walls of synths, lustrous melodies and amorphous bass rumbles. As such his albums have seen him labelled by the likes of ambient patriarch Brian Eno as an electronic innovator, while an impressive sweep of artists from Herbie Hancock & David Holmes to King Creosote + Coldplay, have called upon his handiwork as a producer & composer.

As each piece on 'Insides' segues seamlessly into the next, thunderous claustrophobic frequencies are offset by familiar sounds - the submerged noise of cars on the street or birdsong - and cold currents of melody that open a window and let the day back in.

First single, "Light Through the Veins", is all but perfect: drawing the listener in with each pure, serpentine note. In fact, the aforementioned Coldplay were so taken with the track that they used a reworked version to bookend their bestselling 'Viva la Vida', and persuaded Jon to spend the last six months of 2008 opening their live shows across the U.S.A. + Europe.