Jon Hopkins — Immunity

🐐ElectronicAmbient
Written By Akhil Srivatsan
 
jhi
 

Usually when you can't finish an album it's indicative of its failings. But in rare cases, it's indicative of a greatness that compels you to behave like some sort of character from a movie: hold your head in your hands, sink to your knees, stare at the sky, shake your head in disbelief, whisper wow through teary eyes. That's what happens with Immunity. 

Immunity is among the greatest works of electronic music, but unlike Burial's Untrue, it doesn't feel like a product of spontaneous expression of an individual's surroundings. Instead, you can hear how meticulously each swish is placed, how much consideration has gone into each blast of atmosphere, how much effort is needed for immediacy. The effect is that after a gazillion listens, the album still sounds fresh, new; this isn't to say that you hear something new every time. Of course you do. But the entire album sounds like an entirely new album constructed of songs you know and love. It's a surreal feeling.

Musically: glitchy atmospherics, broken beats inspired by house and UK garage, digital swashes meet analogue piano parts, the near-total absence of the human voice, progressive, technical, often ambient. 

Halfway through Open Eye Signal, you want to run to your workstation and start working on your very own masterpiece. It took Jon Hopkins the better part of a year to make Immunity. It shows. They say not a lot of people heard Velvet Underground and Nico, but everyone who did went and started a band. I feel Immunity might just be that for electronic music on the DL.

Check it out on Bandcamp, Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube.

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Akhil Srivatsan
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