Jon Hopkins @ The Warehouse Project, 12 December

Live Review by Lauren Strain | 01 Jan 2015

The fervour with which Immunity, Jon Hopkins' album of summer 2013, is still met is quite something: eyes roll back to the fissuring whip and crackle of We Disappear; arms are held aloft to the orbital pull of Open Eye Signal. It's clear, too, that tonight most everyone is here for him, and somewhere kicking against the tide at the front you remember that, actually, Warehouse's spiritual Store Street home (sorry Boddingtons) is often more like being in a festival moshpit than a club.

Still, everyone manages to unite for a beatific ten minutes centre-set, as Light Through the Window – from 2008's Insides – unfurls its pale, gauzy layers, as delicate and fine as frost-sugared feathers. Where Hopkins' work prior to last year's record was more understated, even classical in composition, this track proves to have been a precursor to Immunity's breakthrough combination of widescreen melodics and entry-level techno.

This glittering plateau aside, tonight he goes harder than the festival sets that – complete with light-up inflatable balls – he's been playing most of the year, and it more than makes up for the mild (and admittedly childish) disappointment at the lack of those big glowing orbs. In particular, it's a delight to relish in the thrashing, muscular animatronics of Breathe This Air in its original incarnation (without those neutering Purity Ring vocals); along with Collider, it's perhaps the only point at which Immunity – played out live, at least – gets properly nasty, leaving in its disgruntled wake an image of a smoking, molten dystopia. [Lauren Strain]

http://www.jonhopkins.co.uk