Album: Jon Hopkins - Ritual

Jon Hopkins is on a journey, and we’re fortunate that he feels he can share the trip with us. His latest offering takes the listener beyond the paths opened up in Singularity (2018) and Music for Psychedelic Therapy (2021).

There's a coherence in the new album that builds on the explorations of the previous two. A reflection, no doubt, of the clarity he's feeling inside, an increased mastery of the electronic and acoustic means (from synths to strings) at his disposal and brought to the studio by his gifted collaborators, including regulars such as Leo Abrahams (guitar) and Cherif Hashizume (synths). Hopkins has achieved a form that provides a template for an adventure in illumination – daring in its combination of minimalism and emotional depth – deriving a great deal of hypnotic power from relentless yet enchanting repetition.

As Hopkins has said of the music here, “it feels like a tool, maybe even a machine, for opening portals within your inner world, for unlocking things that are hidden and buried.” This is music with a metaphysical bent, designed to encourage our overbearing egos to dissolve, as the music slowly and inexorably builds, and then falls away in heart-and-soul-warming resolution. There are eight tracks, but we're taken through a seamless progression, initially lured into the meditative calm of “Altar “ and “Palace/Illusion”, and from there, slowly and steadily, into the shamanic fury of “Solar Goddess Return” – this track and the previous one propelled forward by a repeated riff reminiscent of Massive Attack’s “Angel” from their album Mezzanine (1998). The way in which this is followed by the ethereal peace of “Dissolution”, the perfect cue for letting go, is magical indeed. The potency of the beautifully evoked process is only enhanced  by repeated listening.

As with “Recovery”, the final track on the 2021 album Singularity, but even more assured in its simple yet profound beauty, the album closes with the seductive reasssurance of "Nothing is Lost", featuring delicate and slightl tweaked piano, backed by a swathe of sound that ever-so-slowly melts away into infinity.

Hopkins manages – and he is the first to admit that this music comes through not from him (so the gift of grace) – to make music inspired by altered states, while simultaneously stimulating them, in a virtuous circle that elevates the spirit in a way that resonates with some of the greatest devotional music, from Sufi chants and Indian Dhrupad to Bach and Fauré.  To call this “ambient” music, fails to encompass what’s essential to so much ritual – an aid to letting go, releasing the flow of love: feel-good music that’s so much more than simply joyful, for it's enirched by the power to heal.

• More New Music reviews on theartsdesk