Matthew P. Hopkins – Blue-Lit Half Breath [LP]

"Matthew P. Hopkins's Blue-Lit Half Breath, his second full-length for Penultimate Press, presents a curious and compelling listen that harnesses his deeply personal and paranoid vision into the ultimate beauty/horror object. Since the mid-2000s Hopkins has distinguished himself as master of multiple musical forms including bent song, freeform concrète, improvised electronics, and techno. Under his own name he has produced a most singular take on abstracted voice, feedback, field recordings, and found sounds. With Blue-Lit Half Breath Hopkins furthers his domestic inquiry into subconscious sounds with a series of vignettes that hover between hissing clunk, atmospheric creep, and improvised piano refrains. Among all this the voice of Hopkins appears throughout as a shadowy narrator delightfully disturbing the sonic play. Blue-Lit Half Breath is a late-night-oil-burning masterpiece that resides within a zone orbiting its own logic. 180-gram LP in glossy sleeve. Edition of 500."

Penultimate Press, 2016