Kratos Himself - First Harvest (2025)

Somewhere, tucked within the crevices of space, a lone vessel explores the infinite wilds - powered not by fuel, but by sound itself. Operated by celestial Patching Pixies, the mythic Mothership Kratos synthesizes raw aural audio into a sustainable musical energy, crawling across galaxies with rhythm as its lifeblood….or so the legend goes, according to dutch beatsmith Jethro Hopmans, creatively Kratos Himself.

First Harvest, the preliminary chapter of his two-part conceptual release, showcases Hopmans at the height of his craft: fusing elements of IDM, boom bap rap, and downtempo stylings that feel as organic as they are otherworldly. First Harvest is a bold exploration of sonic worldbuilding — a cinematic, beat-driven voyage into imagined galaxies, memory, and myth.

Raised in the Netherlands, Hopmans searched for a creative outlet in the jaw harp and percussion before discovering the creative possibilities through sampling and digital editing. For over a decade, he's honed a singular brand of lush, exploratory electronic works — releasing music as Kratos Himself via Friends of Friends and Youngbloods and receiving support from BBC Radio, NTS, Rinse FM, and KCRW.

Hopmans’ work often is underlined by accompanying visual concepts, collaborating with illustrator Demian Janssen to articulate fantastic narratives implied in the abstractions of his elaborate productions. First Harvest melds narrative directly with sound, revisiting characters and textures from Hopmans’ 2023 album Patchwork::

“I always visualize music when I listen to it and wanted to do some worldbuilding that connects back to my past work and can continue into the future. This morphed into an idea of me piloting a spacecraft that runs on sound… sound that needs to be harvested… sounds I've been harvesting for a while. The patching pixies, characters I first introduced in 2023's Patchwork (Friends of Friends) - you can hear their voices return in First Harvest. I've tried to reference the concept through sound. You can hear an array of elements communicating with one another: pixies talking, the sound of a processing room operating, the spacecraft's engine. I started to try and visualize the story I wanted to tell and tried to learn how to illustrate. With help of my friend and collaborator, Demian Janssen, I started drawing and animating to realize the story I wanted to tell. Now that the pixies are out and harvesting, together we can visit many new worlds and discover more sounds.”


Close your eyes, open your ears and you’ll find yourself teleported to the hull of Mothership Kratos, humming through the vacuum of space on the hunt for fuel in the wrinkles of First Harvest’s cascading marimbas, warped vocalese, and alluring chord structures. The album’s opening work, “Arrival”, underlines Hopman’s signature panoramic songwriting by uniting warm, full low-end tones with divine choirs of manipulated strings and synthesized samples. These concepts evolve and transform themselves; verbose standouts in “Satellite” and “Shuttles” see awe-striking Eastern instrumentation and traditional downtempo rhythm palettes collide into shimmering tributes to UK garage, IDM, and 2000s R&B in “Need You” and “Lost Again,” the album’s sole collaborations with producer Deon Custom and vocalist Pollena. As the album concludes and Mothership Kratos looks toward the stars for its next fuel source, the cinema of First Harvest finds its conclusion in “Look Up” - a tonal telescope into the future, and a stringed suggestion that this journey is to be continued.

Open your eyes again and return to your Earthly confines - while you may no longer be hurdling at lightspeed, the charm and inventiveness of Hopmans’ universe remain. First Harvest may have come to an end, but somehow, this is just the beginning. A Second Harvest is on the horizon, setting the stage for myriad future voyages.