Koko, London
The Mercury nominee's organic approach to constructing sound gave his set flesh and feeling
The Mercury nominee's organic approach to constructing sound gave his set flesh and feeling
Cultural commenters were aghast this month when the Mercury prize shortlist emerged without a single token classical or jazz entry at the bottom boasting triple-figure odds of winning. Instead, alone in the rank-outsider spot sat the second Mercury nomination for ambient pioneer and Eno and Coldplay associate Jon Hopkins . His King Creosote collaboration Diamond Mine was unjustly passed over in 2011, and his latest album Immunity – a more frug-friendly offering than previous forays into amorphous melody and movie soundtracks – looks destined for similar cult respect; the kudos of the shunned.
Since Immunity is full of found-sound samples of Olympic Ceremony fireworks, NYC-hotel water pipes and lorry reversing alarms, Hopkins is undoubtedly the sort of freak you'd find off his nut at 4am house parties, prodding kitchen appliances and going, "Listen to this amazing toaster!" But as he taps and fidgets away at a trio of LED pads, building his tracks like a hyperactive stenographer, his organic approach to constructing sounds gives his set depth, solidity, flesh and feeling where most DJs rely on machine-crafted shrillness. Focusing on Immunity and 2009's Insides, he weaves lush, intricate tapestries of thud, hiss, whirr and crackle; We Disappear grows beats like a jungle sunrise while Collider seems built around the workings of the Trumpton town-hall clock. His skewed, inventive creations don't drop out and kick in, they fracture and reform.
At times, such as on Light Through the Veins, based around a familiar refrain Hopkins sampled for Coldplay's Viva La Vida album, he indulges in that glacial sunbeam sound that ambient producers must secretly circulate between themselves in a box marked "God yawning". At others he delves into NIN industrial territory, riveting Insides into sturdy android form before sending it on the warpath. Beneath a cinema screen of magnified dyes crystallising, it's all part of Hopkins' stated aim to hypnotise and overwhelm with sound. A Mercurial display.
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