Customer Reviews

Opalescent

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

One of the tracks from Opalescent was included on a new age sampler CD attached to the front of Nature and Health magazine, which is where I first heard it. The more I listened to the track, the more I wanted the album, but trying to locate Opalescent in Australia was quite difficult. Luckily I managed to find it - finally! - and it has proved to be the best purchase I've ever made, music-wise. This guy is phenomenal, especially considering his age (21). My music collection includes a huge amount of Vangelis, Jarre, Tangerine Dream and most of the heavies of chillout, electronic and ambient music, but I think I wound up listening to tracks from Opalescent at least once or twice a day for literally months - more than anything I've ever owned. Hopkins' music is utterly mesmerizing. It creates an ambient atmosphere unlike anything I've ever heard before. Everything flows together. This will sound cliched, but if you only ever buy one chillout album, let this one be it. I cannot recommend it highly enough, it is one of those one-in-a-million perennially listenable albums that I'm sure I will never tire of.

I confess the opening bars of Jon Hopkins debut album had me worried. A sample of waves lapping on a beach, a crescendo of discordant notes and reverse cymbals building to a patented Pink Floyd swell. Thankfully, the guitar sound which follows is not a monolithic Dave Gilmour tremelo, but a beautiful, plaintive tinkling, as bright and clean as a summer's day. It soon becomes obvious that there are to be more clichés in these first 30 seconds than in the 55 minutes which follow.

The 21-year-old Hopkins was playing piano from the age of five, and by the age of twelve he was studying piano and composition at the Royal College of Music, where he won, amongst other awards, the Concerto Prize. It cannot be easy to carry the tag 'musical genius' from childhood into the adult world of dance music, where technicianship is so easily mistaken for musicianship. Yet Hopkins shows considerable restraint. There is no showmanship here, no arrogant flourishes, just a perfectly constructed, beautifully arranged, minor masterpiece of downtempo melody and mood.

'Opalescent' has a lush velvetiness that is not a million miles from Zero 7, a smoothness of delivery that is pure Groove Armada, topped with the confidence to venture into more challenging and darker moods. The twelve instrumentals work beautifully as late night incidental music, but pay close attention and you will find a veritable smorgasboard of subtle, compelling rhythmic variations, touches of virtuoso piano and guitar tucked away in the mix, melodic threads that slowly wrap themselves around your head, and trip-hop beats that arrive with the sudden inevitablity of a Roald Dahl twist.

Case in point, 'Private Universe', begins with some gentling bubbling, soft synth chords. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, a soft sweep of strings slides in, then some bass, then four minutes later you are swinging along to a full band and thinking, where did all that sound come from? There are numerous similar examples, the slightly sinister 'Cold Out There', the pure, sparkling 'Halcyon', the compelling, climactic 'Cerulean'.

More than anything, 'Opalescent' sounds like the album William Orbit might have made if, instead of chasing Madonna's moolah, he had followed his Strange Cargo series through to a natural, magical conclusion. An enormously promising debut. -AF

Having read many reviews of Jon Hopkins' debut album I was intrigued by the fact that they were united in finding his music deeply moving, but they all had trouble classifying it. Having listened to Opalescent I am of the opinion that Jon Hopkins has created something quite incredibly beautiful, something totally new. This is music that leads you into a false sense of security - on first listening it comes across as very pleasant ambient work, but on repeated listening it begins to reveal quite extraordinary depth and beauty. The overall tone is euphoric, but there are several melancholy moments - notably "Lost In Thought" and "Grace". More than anything the record sounds very personal, very heartfelt. The variety of sonic landscapes found on this record is astounding, and it deserves to be recognised as one of the most important electronic works of the last decade.

I just happened to pick this up on a recent trip to Australia. I had heard it playing in a store I was in and decided on buying it. After listening to it daily for the rest of my trip the CD quickly made it to my favorites list. Simply put, this is an amazing debut release. You'll enjoy it on the first listen, and love it by the second.

I think this album is timeless... the moods, melodies, harmony and textures are second to none. A great mixture of ambient to dance. Up there with the likes of Ulrich Schnauss and Manual. Contact Note is a good album, but Opalescent blows it away. A great buy.

Funny how after buying this album I realised much of it is played in Sex and the City, as well as a few other movies... Still great music none the less. :)

This is a beautifully crafted CD, brimming with lush soundscapes and infectious grooves. Top-notch production and deep creativity come together to produce a stunning aural feast.

Good collection of ambient tunes that you can enjoying listening to over and over.

Every track but one has a simple, thumping percussion line, an artifact of modern music which I increasingly find tedious. No doubt it is easier to appeal to the brain stem rather than the prefrontal lobes. Unobjectionable as background music, but not actually worth listening to. Perhaps best described as music which one may hopefully, in time, grow out of.