Out From Behind The ApronStrings

"Coldplay's keyboard player". Sends a trickle of cold, shivery sweat a-tricklin' down the spine, don't it? A ghastly world of emotion-by-numbers piano plonking, distinguished from Elton John only by being less camp and less fun. So we were not completely sold on this being a winner. Chris had waxed effusively about the winning electronica and atmospherics that this guy produces, so on the hottest night of the year, we pitched into the black hole that is the ICA concert room to find Jon Hopkins a gawky, geeky, bony individual swigging from a Beck's bottle and putting gaffa tape over the manufacturers' logos on his equipment. So far, so home-for-sandwiches-at-mummy's-place. However, his opening gambit was a wide-eyed euphoric techno workout that went on for far too long to be an accident. Increasingly the music got glitchier, acidic, Acidic, and clearly made by repeated pressing of the button marked "Autechre". Better, in other words. Even the three occasions he switched off the software and played the piano, the tunes were obviously a nod to the total uselessness of his paying job (anodyne sub-soundtrack doodles), and only threw the excitment of the computers into sharp relief. It was hard not to be wearing a smile at the end.