The new album from Vanishing Twin, The Age of Immunology is the closest thing we're likely to get to prime Broadcast ever again. The release, coming out on Fire Records this Friday, is blissfully out there, and the sort of thing that's as avant-garde as it is simply alt-pop.
The band -- spngwriter, singer and multi-instrumentalist Cathy Lucas, drummer Valentina Magaletti, bassist Susumu Mukai, synth and guitar player Phil MFU, and visual artist/film-maker Elliott Arndt on flute and percussion -- manage to conjure up worlds with their sound. While something like "You Are Not An Island" sounds suspiciously like early Nineties-era Stereolab, the percolating "Backstroke" ventures into riskier territory, flashes of Can here. Elsewhere, "Magician's Success" is another 'Lab nod, while the sublime and beautiful "Invisible World" is the soundtrack to an imagined film. Elegant and spacious, without being too space-y, it is, like so much here on The Age of Immunology, a tune that's clearly the product of its inspiration-points and wholly something else entirely. By the time that closer "Language is a City (Let Me Out)" rolls forward with its snatches of free jazz, a listener is right to have felt transported over the course of this record.
The Age of Immunology is out on Friday from Fire Records.
More details on Vanishing Twin via the band's official Facebook page, or via the band's official website.
[Photo: Fire Records]