The Tayos Caves

Visiting the Tayos Caves is difficult, and agreeing on what they are seems to be even more so. For the Shuar people, they’re a holy place and a principal gathering point for their favorite food: oilbirds, or tayos in the the local lingo. For Juan Moricz and Erich von Däniken, they’re proof of a lost civilization which lived hand-in-hand with aliens and a resting place for incredible ancient wealth. For most others, they’re a stunning geological throat calling out to spelunkers and pilgrims alike from its home in the western, and often forgotten, edge of the Amazon’s collarbone. 

For Jon Hopkins, who began as a keyboardist for Imogen Heap before becoming something of a Poseidon to the lower reaches of Resurrectional Synthwave, the caves became an instrument for his most recent album Music for Psychedelic Therapy. Like the therapy itself, the album isn’t for everyone or easy to explain. After my first meaningful mushroom trip I told my dad that I felt like I had spent my life reading essays about the ocean and had just now finally visited it, which comes off as a choppy freshman review of a book they didn’t read but seems apropos on the other side of the experience itself. The same might be said for this album. Jon Hopkins takes you somewhere and then brings you back, and what you see along the way likely doesn’t translate well to an afternoon hangout at Denny’s or a party where you’re trying to get laid. That isn’t to say, though, that it’s otherworldly or exaggerated. It feels balanced and astute while allowing the caves to resonate through the arrangements as both a metaphor and a physical space. For me, both the caves and this album are a reminder that the best questions are the ones that lead to more questions, or at least I’ve often found that to be the case.

By around the 2:20ish mark on Track 2 (“Tayos Caves, Ecuador i), you’ll have a good idea if this is your shit or not. If it is, you are in for a real treat, and if it isn’t then feel free to ignore!