Album Review: Immunity - Jon Hopkins

Stunning time-lapse photography of crystal growth and chemical reactions soundtracked by music from Jon Hopkins' upcoming album Immunity forms the basis of this new audiovisual experience, produced in collaboration with The Creators Project. Read more: http://thecreatorsproject.vice.com/blog/microscopic-images-of-food-dye The video is a collaborative effort between art director & typographer Craig Ward, biochemist Linden Gledhill and Jon Hopkins.

Jon Hopkins has quite the cv... The press often make much of his collaborations with Coldplay but to just focus on the fact that he's been busy adding the best bits to Middle England's finest would do him a great disservice. Hopkins first came to fame playing keyboards for the cultish female vocalist Imogen Heap, he has worked with David Holmes and his soundtrack to the (rather excellent) independent sci-fi movie Monsters was nominated for an Ivor Novello Award.

Hopkins also collaborated with Brian Eno on the frantic Small Craft On A Milk Sea, and it is Eno's work that this, Hopkins' fourth solo album proper, feels closest to. Immunity is an extradonairy accomplishment in both beauty and focus.

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Immunity - Jon Hopkins

With an entrance that douses the listener in crafted distortion and beats fractured like glass Hopkins' new approach initially appears to be mostly focused on delivering experimental IDM. Yet within that first track, 'We Disappear', there is a nagging melodic refrain that wins through in the end, a somewhat distressed piano loop emerging from a frenetic whirlwind of electronics.

Immunity sounds something like a car crash slowed down to 1,000 times its original length, like a Justin Bieber record stretched to the point where it is transformed from abomination into something staggering, beautiful and pure. The early tracks are intense and rapid, the crunch of distorted rhythms echoing the crunch of metal on metal on 'Open Eye Signal'. Piano is once again weaved into 'Breathe This Air' in a way the feels like humanity and perhaps tinkling glass in amongst the broader chaos of a slamming four-four beat... But things gradually begin to slow down.

'Abandon Window' marks the entrance of Immunity's second half and second act. The turning point in this album is a cinematic moment of gently stumbling piano playing that deliberately plays with the timing to once again create something that sounds very alive. It's the rear-windscreen being removed and the friendly hands of a rescue worker - compassionate and warm, the piano is surrounded by ambience, layers of found sound and musique concrète. It sounds like Trent Reznor's best work with Atticus Ross.

The three tracks that follow 'Abandon Window' use it as a template, all being slower than the album's first half and letting melody come to the fore. 'Form By Firelight' combines shuffling beats and clicks with distant melodic keys that gently hammer out a fragmented melody. The title track closes the album with traces of a vocal performance and it creates a track that feels like a balance - it is more in time and seems more content than anything else here, and it closes the album on a high. Immunity is quite brilliant.

Immunity is out now, available from Amazon.co.uk on CD and MP3 [affiliate links]. Preview via the video above or listen on Spotify: 

Album Review: On My Way - Kon

Kon typifies the crate digger, that form of man that spends an unhealthy amount of time chasing down circular pieces of black plastic in an attempt to unearth a hidden gem. Whilst physical music and even music ownership as a concept appear to be rapidly and irreversibly losing favour and yet the appeal of vinyl has long seemingly held steady, and Kon is a worshiper of the form.

It's logical that vinyl would appeal to Kon. His music is defined by and revolves around funk, a genre vinyl is undeniably sympathetic too. I've been listening to On My Way on MP3 (well, technically AAC) by way of a CD, but there is no doubt it would sound better through the golden and thick filter of some heavy weight vinyl.

Despite this my experience with On My Way shines. Kon creates funk tracks that have a little of the grit of early funk but deliver it with the liberal application of 80s slick soul production and a dash of 90s R&B. As an album it takes some time to get going - the dizzily spellbound interlude of 'Day Dream' that follows two full tracks feels like the first sit-up-and-take-notice moment. But that brief transient moment is immediately followed by the Georg Levin featuring 'Don't Cha Wanna', a sassy track that sways with sunny promiscuity and backs it up with an infectious chorus you won't want to stop listening to.

Kon's passion for music comes through on this album by means of the music he plays. Despite being a focused album in length and scope, it's 51-minutes in length, there is still room for moments in pure tribute, such as the electro-influenced short side-piece '808 State'. Kon's real strength though is in his assertive guest-vocal featuring funk soul songs. Ben Westbeech, whom Kon met at the Southport Weekender, provides vocals on the insistent 'You Don't Know (I've Been Looking For You)’. The disco and boogie influenced keys of collaborator Yuki Kanesaka are all over this album and lend it much of it's upbeat and house-influenced sound.

There's a lot to like in On My Way. Kon's production talent is clear in managing to create songs with clarity and polish that matches their feeling. On 'Blow Me... A Kiss' Kon manages to marry modern house music to an authentically soulful and syrupy vocal from Amy Douglas that gives the track just a bit more guts than most current dancefloor orientate music... It might not capture the zeitgeist or redefine a genre, but On My Way is an unmistakable pleasure.

On My Way is released on BBE on 22 July, available for pre-order from Amazon.co.uk on CD, LP and MP3 [affiliate links]. 

Album Review: Vapor - Yosi Horikawa

The press release for Yosi Horikawa argues the devil is in the detail. It's easy to understand why. Horikawa's Vapor is a highly textual piece that creates music out of noisy layered sonics and boasts a sophisticated and ambitious sense of scale.

Vapor channels musique concrete and dubby looped samples to conjure something global in scope and seemingly heavily considered. After the opening intro, 'Bump' is a suitable indication of where Horikawa aims to take the listener. It's a tribal-influenced piece full of complex and layered sounds and, at its peak, a template for Vapor as a whole. Similarly 'Rainbow' is tropical and dizzying in ambition, a musical collage constructed of soft ambient chords and a flourish of rhythms constructed from water based samples.

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Vapor - Yosi Horikawa

Elsewhere 'Letter' is a fragile and and subtle piece that combines a broad melody with the tight detail of wound gears and spinning chains, creating a somewhat spellbinding level of melodic detail out of sounds that seemed to have been organised with impossible detail. 'Grandpa' is climatic, a moment of sun-baked tribal irrepressible celebration that starts to heave the curtain closed on a complex album.

The problem with Vapor is that it is here for too long. Yosi Horikawa constructs an album with the same earthly majesty of John Talabot's wonderful 2012 debut, but in applying it to a more freeform genre allows it to blossom. Sadly in doing so he squanders much of the magic, employing a 71-minute album structure at the expense of the listener and just about everything but length.

As the album title suggest, the music here is best consumed in a semi-transient form, at its best it is also at its most difficult to pin down. Sadly in chaining it to a long-form construct we get a album that shines in the present but fades over time. Yosi Horikawa's music might be better consumed in mini-album format. You should listen to its songs but not its whole story.

 Vapor is out now on First Word Records, available on CD and MP3 from Amazon.co.uk [affiliate links]. Stream now on Spotify:

Album Review: Mwahaha - Mwahaha

Mwahaha's debut album was released a couple of weeks ago through Plug Research Records and on it the four-piece have created a dizzy and psychedelic pop record that blends delicate vocals with assertively delivered drum beats and chaotic synth melodies.

Mwahaha has a chaotic sound but recalls The Flaming Lips as much as anything else, capturing the spirit of Wayne Coyne's band just as they descended from heavenly to deeply paranoid. So this album feels a little like At War With The Mystics, if without some of the hooks and the knowing sideways glances to pop-culture. Ross Peacock's vocals are predominantly delivered falsetto, something which manages to simultaneously emphasise the moments of candy-dreams and the descent into the album's more frictional and uncompromising moments.

The album opens with 'Swimmer', a track that seems to roll in like heavy cloud on a summer's day. It's a little out of control with chip-tune bass loops and heady drumming clatter into Peacock's vocals. 'Poinsettia' is a moodier version of the band, the vocals obfuscated beneath several layers of production and at times dropping several octaves.

In the beginning 'We Build' is youthful, reckless and feckless in comparison to Mwahaha's more conflicted moments, but it descends into one of the album's noisiest and most industrial moments - heavily processed vocals functioning as bass lines against a clattering drum beat. When at full-tilt the band channel the same kitchen-sink aesthetic used by melodic electro punk band the Mae Shi.

That latter half of 'We Build' triggers the band's most confrontational moment as the album moves towards its second half. 'Rivers And Their Teeth' is a barrage of sub-bass and found sounds that emerges as a syrupy and doped-up ballad. The album draws to a close with 11-minutes of psychedelic rock in 'Bathynomus Gigantes', a track that slowly builds like a pressure cooker and feels post-apocalyptic. It's the aural equivalent of the shoots of grass that burst through neglected asphalt and animals repurposing our living space after the end of our species. Out of the seemingly disordered sound of Mwahaha comes something new and almost beautiful: they are at their best when their focus is at its worst.

Mwahaha is out now on Plug Research Records, available to order on CD, LP and MP3 from Amazon.co.uk [affiliate links]. Stream the album on Spotify:

Album Review: Fires In The Park - Benin City

There's something eerily familiar about Benin City's debut album for label Audio Donuts. Taking their name from the capital of Nigeria, Benin City's sound is a reflection of the cultural melting pot that is London - there are elements of UK hip-hop and bass music in here, together with experimental spoken word moments. It also feels drenched in references to the artists that inspired vocalist Joshua Idehen and his band.

There are moments where Fires In The Park sounds like the Pixies meets Bloc Party, as on single 'Faithless', with its low-slung Kim Deal bass line and building synths. But just as often they sound like TV On The Radio, particularly when the horns are busted out by Tom Leaper, who also handles synths and samples. 'Baby' is a good example - a track torn between balladry and angst heavy trip-hop that is to relationships what a tailspin is to planes. On 'D.A.M.' we get Idehen with his vocals at their thickest and heaviest - there's a hint of Roots Manuva to the flow.

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Fires In The Park - Benin City

The album succeeds despite these components, not because of them. Where some bands are enjoyable in the way they sound like others, Benin City are unique and never feel even close to a one trick pony. Theo Buckingham's drumming and percussion work flows, loose and full of feeling, and the stripped back combination of sounds the band makes feels raw yet strangely polished. The experience of sounds feels extreme - brass is even more metallic, the bass usually rests much lower than everything else in the mix and a lot of the drumming is crisp, full of treble and mechanically staccato.

Fire In The Park is best and Benin City's vision most fully realised on the glorious 'This Is London PT2’ ( strangely there is no part one). A female spoken word vocal opens the track with a tribute to London's scruffy, messed up and contradictory beauty, declaring love before going on to declare London even more in love in return. It is a reciprocal attraction: London needs its people as much, or even more, than its people need it. For a band that both take much from but also give back to London's sounds it is a fittingly intimate and infatuated moment.

 Fires In The Park is out now on Audio Donuts, available from Amazon.co.uk on CD and MP3 [affiliate links]. Stream it now on Spotify: