Jon Hopkins

It appears that Pitchfork liked this one a bit more than I did...I did like it, just not as much.

Immunity
Jon Hopkins
Domino


BY JENNIFER KELLY

Jon Hopkins works in a shifting palette of organic and electronic sounds, building glitch-scratched beats out of jingling keys, stomped piano pedals and breath. “We Disappear” starts in the recognizable sounds of a key turning, a door slamming and footsteps, a mundane set of signifiers which morphs, gradually into an abstract sort of beat. It’s the human dissolving into auditory signal, experience melting into synapse flashes, an idealization that is not quite familiar, but feels as if it ought to be.

Hopkins has worked with Brian Eno, Coldplay and, most recently, with the British folk singer King Creosote on Diamond Mine, one of 2012’s most evocative and lovely albums. His work here is far more austere and cerebral than on Diamond Mine, and, paradoxically, more tethered to rhythm. “Collider”, Immunity’s long centerpiece pulses with jackhammer insistence, yet seems to inhabit an idealization of a dance floor, rather than the sweaty thing itself. That sense of Platonic ideal will be familiar to anyone who spent time with Diamond Mine, where the sound of voices, birds, clinking cutlery conjured not just a seaside town, but the idea of the sea itself.


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Jon Hopkins

I'm not really an electronics type, but Jon Hopkins participated in one of my absolute favorite albums from a couple of years ago, a joint effort with King Creosote, where he surrounded the really gorgeous, fragile folk melodies of KC with oddly evocative bits of found and manufactured sound...Immunity Jon Hopkins latest solo album is a bit drier and more abstract (because, doh, it doesn't have King Creosote on it), but quite lovely in spots. Here's a video while I try to think of something intelligent to say about it for Blurt.



Sorry I've been so haphazard lately. My work has picked up a bit, and I'm in the middle of track meet frenzy (three meets this week, two next...good times).

My year-end is up

Read all about it here. By the way, there's a button you can press to listen to music from my list while you're reading. It obviously doesn't work on dial-up (what does?) but if anyone wants to try it and tell me what it's like, that'd be cool.

Or, skip the words, and just check out the list:
1. Skull Defekts, Peer Amid (Thrill Jockey)
2. Psychic Paramount, II (Important)
3. David Kilgour, Left by Soft (Merge)
4. King Creosote and Jon Hopkins, Diamond Mine (Domino)
5. Dirtbombs, Party Store (In the Red)
6. Gem Club, Breakers (Hardly Art)
7. Mogwai, Hard Core Will Never Die But You Will (Sub Pop)
8. Sidi Toure, Sahel Folk (Thrill Jockey)
9. UV Race, Homo (In the Red)
10. Bonnie Prince Billy, Wolfroy Comes to Town (Drag City)
11. Veronica Falls, Veronica Falls (Slumberland)
12. Bats, Free All the Monsters (Flying Nun)
13. Sole and the Skyrider Band, Hello Cruel World (Fake Four)
14. Demdike Stare, Tryptych (Modern Love)
15. Get Help, The Good Green Earth (Midriff)
16. Arrica Rose and the Dot, Dot Dots, Let Alone Sea (PopRock)
17. Sam Phillips, Solid State (Littlebox)
18. Emperor X, Western Transport (Bar/None)
19. Ty Segall, Goodbye Bread (Drag City)
20. Bad Sports, Kings of the Weekend (Dirtnap)

Dusted Mid-Year

It's list time at Dusted, which runs a wrap of our favorite albums so far this year. Mine is Skull Defekts...others include Demdike Stare, Peaking Lights, Apache Dropout, Milk Music, High Llama, Anne-James Chaton, Tommy Guerrero, King Creosote and the Magic ID. I've heard probably 70% of this and it's all pretty interesting.

Have a look.

King Creosote

My review of the electronically enhanced Scottish folk collaboration between King Creosote and Jon Hopkins ran today at Dusted.

Artist: King Creosote & Jon Hopkins
Album: Diamond Mine
Label: Domino
Review date: May. 19, 2011
“….All seven tracks on Diamond Mine are strong, but “Bubbles,” coming mid-way through, does the best job of bridging Anderson’s quavery humanity with lush, electronically aided textures. The song’s rhythmic bed marries traditional banjo plucking with scratchy, glitchy percussion. Its florid choruses augment Anderson’s tremor with lovely female harmonies, piano and washes of synthetic tone. Anderson’s bare melody seems to long for unearthly beauty and then find it, unexpectedly, in swells and flourishes of electronic glory. …”

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Dusted also reviewed the career retrospective Thrawn this month.


Here he is at SXSW this year.