Immersion are Wire’s Colin Newman and experimental musician Malka Spigel (who also happens to be his wife), and Analogue Creatures is their first album since 1999’s Low Impact. Released on the pair‘s own imprint, Swim~, it couldn’t be more self-contained and self-governing.
Hence their return now, on a whim: they decided to revive the operation after a synth-based shopping trip to New York early in 2015. Only it’s not all about worshipping at the altar of analogue keyboards this time: Analogue Creatures features lots of guitars too – many played by Spigel, nominally a bassist. That’s somewhat counter to the previous, no-guitar ethos of Immersion, who emerged in the early 90s in thrall to minimal techno. And yet the deployment of both instruments is the same as ever, with tracks built out of loops. If that sounds like the basis for a series of abstract, ambient dronescapes, you’d be right. Think systems music meets the repetitive mantra-onics of Krautrock. The title of track two, Shapeshifters, neatly captures these slowly evolving pieces. The overall effect is trance-inducing – the mesmeric state, not the dance-floor motion, although you never know.
