IMMUNE put out a tracer EP on Gizeh Records back in November 2003. Whisperin' and Hollerin' were impressed. We said "it's an excellent, provocative start". Were we wrong?
IMMUNE'S debut album, a full 30 months later is an astonishingly mature work. The standard reference points for a new band with a first album seem irrelevant. And I don’t want to start naming the past decade's classic rock albums, for fear of having you not believe me. I think that if you went now to get five serious (define that however you like) rock albums from your own collection then 1/f could confidently take its chances alongside them. This is what new bands should be doing, of course. But with every year that passes the temptation to go retro, or to emulate something else that's currently selling gets harder to pass up. All sorts of beguiling new lo-fi trends look enticing too. Making unreasonable perfectionist demands of yourselves and your music is not such a cool thing to do anyway and, as In IMMUNE's case, it can take two and a half years out of your life.
1/f comprises eleven tracks and runs for a fraction over 55 minutes. The overall impact is stunning. But one at a time it goes like this.
"Ask" is a sequence of chords and gentle textures, from soft bells to Adam Tinsley's bass guitar and some hard metallic scrapes. Volcanic landscapes are evoked and clear thoughts are summoned. Huge volume in the last section fades quickly to nothing
"Human" immediately adds a brisker tempo with an urgent, sweetly tuned drum kit and a pure clear vocal. Touches of guitar chords give a harmonic backdrop and don't muddy the percussion track. Synths work into the mix, additional vocal tracks are added and it gets more densely packed. By 3.30 it’s pretty well full band sound. Then it drops again to leave Paul Tinsley's exquisitely exposed vocal with an alien backdrop before the drums pound in bigger than before. There are no repeated sections here – it’s more, or different, each time things change.
"Monkey" is the roughest hewn, hookiest song on the album. It has a Kid A feel to it with an angry snarl tearing strips off the edge of the tune with fierce metal claws. Some very disturbing electronic noises burr and buzz like insects burying into your cochlea.
"To The Flux" opens with atmospheric space noises and a spooked vocal against a plucked arpeggio of some kind The voice splits into pieces and the fragments of sound strew themselves across some of those luxury big drum sounds and more voices crowd in. Where "Monkey" keeps closing down and hurting, this opens out and releases.
"Sum" is a sunnier, more rolling upbeat instrumental thing with a lot of bass and a Tortoise feel to it. A delicious muted trumpet part floats in after a couple of minutes as the basic riff keeps building. The trumpet comes forward and plays a long tune with a distinctly modernist sound.
"Forever" is a soaring tune – a song that could have been on a Radiohead album. Shorn Keld's drum kit offers the principal accompaniment but there are plenty of other things there too. Each of Adam Tinsley's guitar chords is savoured for tone, texture and volume. Rather nice. There's a big long crescendo and then a full minute of quieter times till the end.
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"Selling Screen" seems to have a political/cultural bite to it. It starts in the metallic bowels of something unpleasant, gurgling and creaking with thunderous undertones. We have a reprise of fractured vocal that gradually opens out into a chorister's alto. I'm reminded of David Fendick of Vib Gyor for a moment. Immune's style is to keep intervening, adding, subtracting, multiplying or shifting the layers. By the end of its seven minutes "Selling Screen" is a huge beast of a song.
"Monatomy" is like a folk song arranged by Eric Satie. It’s graced with lovely piano and a voice with Buckley-style range and delicacy. There are haunting backing vocals and the delightful piano takes it right to the end. Ravishing
"***)" is your horror sci-fi intro with desert winds, robotic rats singing songs of death and more punishing silence than is decent. The tune arrives but I'm too nervous to get too soothed. Nonetheless it is a lovely tune. The scenes roll by, the epic unwinds, and we’re breathless with noise by the end of the six minutes 40.
"Consume" is a church song with Gregorian monks in the cold and dark. Some kind of time warp spins in some Aphex Twin or Squarepusher themes and we're off again, speeding into a distant future. The voice cuts more deeply this time, with a harsher edge. The feeling I get is that is that when we sing "consume" we mean by flames of hell rather than mouth and gorge.
The end is a reflection of the beginning. It’s shorter instrumental tune "Questions", bring us gently to earth and making that immediate replay a necessity. The is no doubt for me that this album marks one of the most astonishing achievements of genuinely independent music this year. It really is in a class of its own.
I have read and heard a few reactions to this album now. "Wow!" apart, most link it to a favourite other band. Interestingly, that favourite other band is nearly always a different one. As I finish this review I am personally listening to KING CRIMSON'S classic "Discipline" album from 1981. And I'm just starting to notice connections …
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