Jon Hopkins
LateNightTales
Release Date: Mar 3, 2015
Genre(s): Electronic, Ambient, House, Downtempo
Record label: LateNightTales
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Album Review: LateNightTales by Jon Hopkins
Great, Based on 4 Critics
Based on rating 8.5/10
Head here to submit your own review of this album. Jon Hopkins works hard. Late Night Tales is released as his mammoth Immunity audiovisual tour comes to a close. It's set to be a special few weeks for Hopkins as it marks the end of one chapter and the beginning of another. Late Night Tales as a ….
Based on rating 8/10
It would be an understatement to say that Jon Hopkins' career turned a corner between the release of his first mix album, The Art of Chill 2, and the release of his second one, a volume in the LateNightTales series. For starters, from late 2005 through early 2015, the producer/musician made albums with Brian Eno and King Creosote, composed music for a dance production and films, and released the well-regarded solo recordings Insides and Immunity. LateNightTales is Hopkins' first "proper" mix album since the tracks for The Art of Chill 2 were dealt to him.
Based on rating 7.5/10
For over a decade, the Late Night Tales mix series has found extended life by providing artists—mostly European, mostly centrally located in the indie-dance continuum—with an acceptable venue for their post-whatever tracklists. Essentially just natural runoff from the glut of afterparty compilations that overstuffed the "various" placards in dance music sections in record stores everywhere for most of the early 2000s, Late Night Tales’ big trick is a semantic one. By reframing these mixes so they’re more about a non-specific 3 A.M.
Based on rating 7/10
Although Jon Hopkins has so far only released four records in his 16-year career, the English producer/musician has worked on an incredible range of projects, from remixes, movie and stage scores, to collaborations with big names like Coldplay and Brian Eno. Focusing on haunting textures, while highlighting tracks built around gorgeous minor key piano playing and gentle guitar strumming, much of the music on the 39th edition of Late Night Tales is delivered in a heavily stylized, moody nature that matches his own approach to creating art. Mostly sticking to modern day artists — Darkstar, Holy Other, Teebs, Four Tet — Hopkins' mix peaks with his elegant (and somehow not sappy) piano instrumental cover of Yeasayer's "I Remember," perfectly sandwiched between Leatherette's neon "After Dawn" and David Holmes' cinematic "Hey Maggy.
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