Immunity… From negative press

Review: Jon Hopkins – Immunity

Published on June 24th, 2013 | Jonny Abrams

Jon Hopkins’s fourth album Immunity is an absolute delight of synaesthetic squelchiness, announcing as much on the rubbery, static electro of opening track “We Disappear” and the throbbing, fizzy techno of “Open Eye Signal”.

The Brian Eno and Coldplay collaborator…okay, Eno produced a Coldplay album, but that’s still a difficult juxtaposition to get your head around. It’s like Aphex Twin and Travis.

Furthermore, there are conceivably people out there who read the previous paragraph and thought, “Oh, how original, mentioning the Brian Eno and Coldplay collaborations. DOUCHE.”

But, you know, that’s some good ‘key word’ jerky right there. (Don’t get started on beginning a sentence with ‘but’, we’ll stand by that.)

Where were we? Oh yes: the Brian Eno and Coldplay collaborator (double bonus) wields lusciously thick, sticky-sounding dance floor fare that’s all abuzz with crinkly analog distortion and all sorts of lovely rhythm section frills like that. As such, it also makes for a splendid ‘headphones’ album.

Immunity is like the Jagwar Ma album with the pop and acid house torn off velcro-style and replaced with a layer of brooding, twinkly Mogwai-ness that radiates, er, postrockishly whensoever the predominant clubby beat takes a break.

Like the Jagwar Ma LP, it feels from start to finish like one flowing transmission, altogether mixlike you might say, and on the likes of “Collider” it bubbles and fizzes over into sheer rapture, like some euphorically shaken-up cola.

The pervading nocturnalism is swept aside by twelve-minute penultimate track “Sun Harmonics”, which breathes pure liquid sunshine onto the back of its beat’s neck, creating a universe unto itself through sounding so bloody epic.

Jon Hopkins has done some damn fine work on Immunity but Rocksucker suspects that his virtuoso attention to rhythmic textures could yet provide the backbone for something still finer.

Immunity is out now on Domino.

You can buy Immunity on iTunes or on Amazon.

Rocksucker says: Three and a Half Quails out of Five!

a quail a quail a quail half a quail

Artists: jon hopkins

About the Author

Jonny Abrams Editor of Rocksucker and the website's founder, Jonny is passionate about the music he listens to, both good and bad, as well as interviewing his favourite musicians.