A funny thing happened last year for Colin Newman and Malka Spigel and their project Immersion. “We suddenly had a tour last autumn and we only had a half-hour set,” says Newman. “Instead of adding a few oldies and fleshing it out, we wrote a bunch of new material.”
Newman and Spigel have made a lot of music. Newman first gained acclaim with Wire in the late 1970s. Spigel co-founded the post-punk band Minimal Compact in the early 1980s. “If you try and sell Immersion as being somebody from Wire and somebody from Minimal Compact, they come with with a whole expectation that it’s going to be those things or both and it’s neither,” says Newman. “Immersion is Immersion. It’s its own thing and for us it makes much more sense to build that organically.”
With Immersion, which has a body of work going back to the mid-1990s, they have amassed a good amount of music as well. But, in recent years, the two had been concentrating on collaborations with artists ranging from Stereolab’s Laetitia Sadier to the ambient country trio Suss, which you can hear on Immersion’s Nanocluster series of releases. “It’s challenging to us as artists to work with other artists, to find commonality, to find a way forward,” says Newman. “We really thought that was what Immersion was going to be doing, so suddenly being a touring band having a new album, there was not a plan for that, but in a way that makes it even better.”
“it wasn’t forced,” says Spigel.
Adds Newman, “That’s how life works during the best and worst of times, stuff just happens.”
The result is Immersion’s latest album, WTF??, where Newman and Spigel rip through eight fiery and rhythmic psychedelic jams that, as you might have guessed from the title, reflect the current state of the world.
“Lyrically, I guess we became very direct,” says Newman. “Maybe it’s being older, I don’t know. We’re less introspective. It’s not about us. We’re looking outwards.”
“Also, the situation in the world makes you think and feel so much that you want to express it in songs,” adds Spigel.
In a song like “Use It Don’t Lose It,” the message is, ultimately, an uplifting one with lines like, “you can make a difference/if you know how.”
“You can take it on many different levels,” says Newman. “It can be freedom or something for old people who don’t get out and exercise.”
“It’s a mental thing,” says Spigel.
Newman and Spigel, who also host the radio show Swimming in Sound, bounce statements off each other as we chat. It’s similar to how the two trade off vocals in the song “How to Be.” The more they talk, the more you can hear how much of themselves are in Immersion.
“When you’re in a relationship, you trust, or you build trust and trust is number one what can lead to working together in an open, free way,” says Spigel.
“But, when we look outwards, we see that one of the bigger problems in the world now is lack of trust and a lack of people having a common agenda. Everyone’s got their own agenda. It’s all very selfish,” says Newman.
“And divided,” Spigel adds.
Newman describes three stages in the evolution of WTF?? They had a few recordings stemming from sessions in Brooklyn with Matt Schulz and Brighton. When they realized that they needed more material for a live set, they pulled some of the best bits and continued to work on them. “That was good enough for live,” Newman explains. “Once we toured that material through the UK and we toured that material through America, then, when we got back in April, May, June, that’s when we basically had to make the record.”
“It’s good in a way because you create something, but then it gets developed on the road,” Spigel says, “so when you come to the final work on it, you have much more of an idea of how you want it to sound.”
Some of the album’s lyrical content developed on the road as well. “Especially in the U.S., people seem to be wanting to have a message to maybe hold onto or to feel supported,” says Spigel.
“All of this is kind of a surprise,” says Newman. “People responded very positively partly to our energy and partly a part of what we’re saying.”
It makes sense. Really, WTF?? seems to be an album about resilience. You’ll hear that in “Push the Rock,” when Spigel sings, “Are we too small to make a difference?/Maybe? But, we can only try.”
“We’re faced with a world that, frankly, we had no idea that we were going to be facing if you go back 20 years. We wouldn’t have imagined that we would be where we are now,” says Newman. “What the fuck? But, also, it’s a piece of humor as well. It’s a funny reaction, but it’s also deadly serious.”
Or, as Spigel says, the album is about, “how to be in the world today. “
That all comes together in the song “How to Be,” where the two alternate verses, asking questions like, “how do we not get addicted to change for its own sake?” and “If you repeat something enough times, will it become meaningless?”
“Hopefully, maybe in 10 years times, things will be different or whatever, but, hopefully, those things will make sense because they also are not completely specific about one time frame or one emotion or one way of being,” says Newman. “How to be is a question for all human beings at all times.”
Liz O. is an L.A.-based writer and DJ. Read her recently published work and check out her upcoming gigs or listen to the latest Beatique Mix. Follow on Instagram or Bluesky for more updates.
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