Jon Hopkins: Ritual review | Alexis Petridis’s album of the week

Or perhaps it has to do with the music itself. Like those of its predecessor, 2021’s Music for Psychedelic Therapy, Ritual’s contents would once have been filed under the heading of ambient music. There are beatless drones topped with twinkling bell-like sounds, whispering voices and echoing, wordless snatches of vocals. A fragile piano figure floats over waves of spectral electronics. When a rhythm does appear midway through, it’s at half the speed of the arpeggiated synthesiser patterns around it, closer to a pulse than anything that would propel you to the dancefloor.