Jon Hopkins‘ new album is a quiet stunner, with the most breathtaking, „breathgiving“ final piece, „Sit Around The Fire“. Though Ram Dass (the voice speaking) is known as a spiritual teacher, his words reach beyond the space of preaching to the converted. It is easy to absorb them in their deeply human, existential, even „existentialist“ dimension. Martina Weber will mention „Music For Psychedelic Therapy“ in an interview she did with me the other day. And, another theme entering there, is the sphere of friendship and love in regards to Neil Young’s „Barn“, a late work with the incredible „Crazy Horse“. Apart from two outstanding songs there is a short little hymn at the end.
(m.e.)
„Everybody looks at Neil with Crazy Horse and thinks Cinnamon Girl or Down By The River or Like A Hurricane. Y’know, 20-minute, bombastic, 120-decibel assaults. No one gives them credit for the times they’re teared-up and crying and dumping their guts behind the lyric. Like the last song on Barn, Don’t Forget Love. I mean, it rips my heart out. And I mixed it. I’ve heard it 1000 times. When they did it, they were all thinking about the lyric. They were all singing ‘don’t forget love’ and what it meant to them. There wasn’t a dry eye in the [recording] truck. That’s what you get that’s different. They don’t do parts. They do emotions. With Crazy Horse, you’re not recording individual instruments, you’re recording a combined soul.”(Niko Bolas, producer on and off, since Landing on Water)