Jon Hopkins’ debut album, Opalescent, was reissued last week in celebration of the 15th anniversary of its release, and now there is a new video to accompany album track ‘Cold Out There’
Opalescent, it should be noted, was recorded not long after Hopkins had quit the idea of becoming a professional concert pianist. He played in a touring band for a while, then he moved back to London and was given a computer by Just Music so as to record an album for them. It is altogether a very reduced and subtle affair, bearing few overt references to his recent output such as on his last album, Immunity.
The song, an ambient ode of entrancing albeit fleeting beauty, is accompanied by video footage shot by a drone hovering several hundred meters over the Norfolk coast. The landscape’s silvery blue surface and snakelike riverbeds recall fantastic imaginary worlds, at once “familiar and uncertain”, as director Dan Tombs writes. Set on top of the footage, like a floating hologram, are undefinable shapes constantly reforming, offering “a glimpse of imaginary celestial bodies moving through time and space.”
