Insides
Encyclopedia
Insides is the third studio album released by electronica
Electronica
Electronica includes a wide range of contemporary electronic music designed for a wide range of uses, including foreground listening, some forms of dancing, and background music for other activities; however, unlike electronic dance music, it is not specifically made for dancing...

 and dance
Dance music
Dance music is music composed specifically to facilitate or accompany dancing. It can be either a whole musical piece or part of a larger musical arrangement...

 musician Jon Hopkins
Jon Hopkins
Jon Hopkins is a London-based producer and musician who writes and performs his own melodic electronica and dance music. After starting his career performing keyboard for Imogen Heap, he's produced or contributed to albums by Brian Eno, Coldplay, David Holmes, and others...

. Released on May 5, 2009, it reached #15 on the Billboard
Billboard (magazine)
Billboard is a weekly American magazine devoted to the music industry, and is one of the oldest trade magazines in the world. It maintains several internationally recognized music charts that track the most popular songs and albums in various categories on a weekly basis...

 Dance/Electronic Album Chart in 2009. PopMatters
PopMatters
PopMatters is an international webzine of cultural criticism that covers many aspects of popular culture. PopMatters publishes reviews, interviews, and detailed essays on most cultural products and expressions in areas such as music, television, films, books, video games, comics, sports, theater,...

 listed the album as one of the top ten electronic albums of 2009.

Production

Hopkins's third album, Insides, was released by Domino Records on May 5, 2009. Musicians Lisa Lindley-Jones, Leo Abrahams
Leo Abrahams
Leo Abrahams is a British musician, composer, and producer. He has collaborated with a multitude of professional musicians, including Brian Eno, Imogen Heap, Jarvis Cocker, Carl Barât, and Paul Simon. After attending the Royal Academy of Music in England, he started his musical career by touring as...

, Emma Smith, Davide Rossi
Davide Rossi
Davide Francesco Rossi , is a violinist, string arranger, composer and a record producer, perhaps best known for being the violinist, guitar and keytar-player for the British electronic music group Goldfrapp, and for his large contribution of electric violin parts and for all the string...

, and Vince Sipprell contributed to the studio recordings. Insides included the track "Light Through the Veins," which had previously been used on the Coldplay
Coldplay
Coldplay are a British alternative rock band formed in 1996 by lead vocalist Chris Martin and lead guitarist Jonny Buckland at University College London. After they formed Pectoralz, Guy Berryman joined the group as a bassist and they changed their name to Starfish. Will Champion joined as a...

 album Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends
Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends
Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends, often referred to as simply Viva la Vida is the fourth studio album by British rock band Coldplay, released on 11 June 2008 on Parlophone. The album was named after a Spanish phrase that translates in English as "long live life"...

. Some of the tracks had been written by Hopkins sporadically since his last release, while others were based on the music he had composed for the Entity production commissioned by choreographer Wayne McGregor
Wayne McGregor
Wayne McGregor CBE is a British choreographer of contemporary modern dance. His work is highly distinctive in its vocabulary of movement, for its integration of dance with film and visual art, and for his active interest and incorporation of computer technology and biological science...

 in 2008.

Reception

Insides charted at #15 on the Billboard
Billboard (magazine)
Billboard is a weekly American magazine devoted to the music industry, and is one of the oldest trade magazines in the world. It maintains several internationally recognized music charts that track the most popular songs and albums in various categories on a weekly basis...

 Dance/Electronic Albums chart. PopMatters
PopMatters
PopMatters is an international webzine of cultural criticism that covers many aspects of popular culture. PopMatters publishes reviews, interviews, and detailed essays on most cultural products and expressions in areas such as music, television, films, books, video games, comics, sports, theater,...

 listed the album as one of the top ten electronic albums of 2009.

Reviews

The album received positive reviews from sources such as Popmatters
PopMatters
PopMatters is an international webzine of cultural criticism that covers many aspects of popular culture. PopMatters publishes reviews, interviews, and detailed essays on most cultural products and expressions in areas such as music, television, films, books, video games, comics, sports, theater,...

, Allmusic, and the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

. Paul Clarke of the BBC wrote that "Hopkins [is] capable of producing music as epic, soaring and emotional as any power ballad in his own way though. Take "Light Through The Veins" for example...a close relative of Ulrich Schnauss
Ulrich Schnauss
-Biography:Ulrich Schnauss was born in the northern German seaport of Kiel in 1977. He became interested in a range of music: My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive, Tangerine Dream, Chapterhouse, and early bleep & breakbeat tracks...

' "In All The Wrong Places", it's a majestic piece of widescreen shoegazing
Shoegazing
Shoegazing is a subgenre of alternative rock that emerged from the United Kingdom in the late 1980s. It lasted there until the mid 1990s, with a critical zenith reached in 1990 and 1991...

 which grows ever more expansive throughout its entire ten minute duration...no amount of reflected glory could ever fully illuminate Insides mysterious depths."

According to other reviews, the album "takes its cues from ambient electronica, but uses strings and piano, along with some very tasty beats and dubstep
Dubstep
Dubstep is a genre of electronic dance music that originated in south London, England. Its overall sound has been described as "tightly coiled productions with overwhelming bass lines and reverberant drum patterns, clipped samples, and occasional vocals"....

-influenced bass on some tracks." Alan Ranta of Tiny Mix Tapes
Tiny Mix Tapes
Tiny Mix Tapes is an online music and film webzine that focuses primarily on new music and related news. In addition to its reviews, it is noted for its subversive, political, and sometimes surreal news, as well as its mix tapes generator.-History:Originally called Tiny Mixtapes Gone to Heaven and...

 stated the album "strikes me as his single most aggressive release yet. His sense of timing, the clarity of his production, and the variety of effects he employs draw you into the story that each instrumental tells. Jon Hopkins is not a button-pushing man of presets; he is a bona fide composer and a trained pianist. Craftsmanship sets him apart, and allows Insides to be as incredibly moving as it is and always will be."

Tracklisting

  1. "The Wider Sun" – 2:37
  2. "Vessel" – 4:44
  3. "Insides" – 4:40
  4. "Wire" – 4:43
  5. "Colour Eye" – 5:13
  6. "Light Through the Veins" – 9:21 (samples on Coldplay
    Coldplay
    Coldplay are a British alternative rock band formed in 1996 by lead vocalist Chris Martin and lead guitarist Jonny Buckland at University College London. After they formed Pectoralz, Guy Berryman joined the group as a bassist and they changed their name to Starfish. Will Champion joined as a...

    's "Life in Technicolor" and "The Escapist," from "Viva la Vida
    Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends
    Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends, often referred to as simply Viva la Vida is the fourth studio album by British rock band Coldplay, released on 11 June 2008 on Parlophone. The album was named after a Spanish phrase that translates in English as "long live life"...

    ")
  7. "The Low Places" – 6:37
  8. "Small Memory" – 1:43
  9. "A Drifting Up" – 6:29
  10. "Autumn Hill" – 2:40

Personnel

  • Leo Abrahams
    Leo Abrahams
    Leo Abrahams is a British musician, composer, and producer. He has collaborated with a multitude of professional musicians, including Brian Eno, Imogen Heap, Jarvis Cocker, Carl Barât, and Paul Simon. After attending the Royal Academy of Music in England, he started his musical career by touring as...

     – electric
    Electric guitar
    An electric guitar is a guitar that uses the principle of direct electromagnetic induction to convert vibrations of its metal strings into electric audio signals. The signal generated by an electric guitar is too weak to drive a loudspeaker, so it is amplified before sending it to a loudspeaker...

     guitar
    Guitar
    The guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a body with a rigid neck to which the strings, generally six in number, are attached. Guitars are traditionally constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut or, more recently, with...

    , hurdy gurdy
    Hurdy gurdy
    The hurdy gurdy or hurdy-gurdy is a stringed musical instrument that produces sound by a crank-turned rosined wheel rubbing against the strings. The wheel functions much like a violin bow, and single notes played on the instrument sound similar to a violin...

  • Lisa Lindley-Jones – vocals
    Singing
    Singing is the act of producing musical sounds with the voice, and augments regular speech by the use of both tonality and rhythm. One who sings is called a singer or vocalist. Singers perform music known as songs that can be sung either with or without accompaniment by musical instruments...

  • Davide Rossi
    Davide Rossi
    Davide Francesco Rossi , is a violinist, string arranger, composer and a record producer, perhaps best known for being the violinist, guitar and keytar-player for the British electronic music group Goldfrapp, and for his large contribution of electric violin parts and for all the string...

     – electric
    Electric violin
    An electric violin is a violin equipped with an electronic output of its sound. The term most properly refers to an instrument purposely made to be electrified with built-in pickups, usually with a solid body...

     violin
    Violin
    The violin is a string instrument, usually with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is the smallest, highest-pitched member of the violin family of string instruments, which includes the viola and cello....

  • Emma Smith – violin
  • Vince Sipprell – viola
    Viola
    The viola is a bowed string instrument. It is the middle voice of the violin family, between the violin and the cello.- Form :The viola is similar in material and construction to the violin. A full-size viola's body is between and longer than the body of a full-size violin , with an average...


External links

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