Hopkins' latest is a bristling, textured trip, filling housey frames to bursting with drones and glitchy twists. Every moment has momentum to the next, but the actual progress is glacial and subtle and at odd angles to the world, your clockwork horse losing ground on a treadmill.
Then the bottom drops out. The second half sheds nearly all of the tension and twitch: Abandon Window wafts in mist-thin ambiance, and the piano-and-moan of Immunity sounds right off of Hopkins' King Creosote collab. Even Form By Firelight's hard beats are undermined by tinkling pianos, overtaken by uncertain tones, and finally smothered into a closing thirty seconds of silence.
And somehow the two sides cohere, tones of longing and frustration and resignation and acceptance battling to a stalemate that vibrates in place, a complex self twisting in time. A possible masterpiece that I respected more than I enjoyed 3.5/5
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