Immersion on ‘WTF??’ and Making Music in Strange Times

There are labors of love, and then there’s Immersion. Active since 1994, Immersion are the brainchild of husband-and-wife duo Colin Newman (of Wire fame) and Malka Spigel (best known for her work in Minimal Compact). Born out of a shared affinity for techno, Immersion have evolved into different iterations and genres over the decades. It is an ever-revolving, ever-expanding project that has run the gamut from ambient to Kosmische to techno and everything in between.

Immersion’s latest album, WTF??, is a self-proclaimed reflection on “very, very strange times”—times that would’ve been once inconceivable to Spigel and Newman when they were starting on their respective musical journeys. The record was born out of the group’s very first tour, which took place in the fall of 2024—exactly 30 years after their original formation.

The songs have a propulsive, forward-motion energy that’s reflective of classic krautrock, largely thanks to drummer Matt Schulz, whose percussion is one of the LP’s highlights. Vocals ebb and flow in an almost free-form manner across the album—sometimes sung, sometimes spoken—as Spigel and Newman beckon the listener to remain hopeful during trying times. 

In the following interview, the couple discuss the new album, the radio show they host together, the current state of the music industry, and—most importantly—the role of the artist in today’s world: “to provoke in a positive way”. 

I know that the two of you, for years, were busy with your nanocluster project and all the collaborations involved in that, and it seems like this album is a step in a different direction. Can you walk me through the inception of the new record and where it all started? 

Colin: Yeah, there is a bit of a backstory. I mean, we had been working on Nanocluster stuff, as you say, and we thought that that would be what Immersion would be—we would just do collaborations. Then last May, we did a random performance at a festival in Brighton. We did a half-hour set, a festival set, and went in with no expectations. Within half an hour of coming off stage, we had a live agent, which we hadn’t had before. She was saying to us, “You guys are amazing, you should be playing gigs. I’m gonna fix you a tour.” We did a UK tour last fall, and we had to include a batch of new songs, which became the backbone of what became “WTF??” We’ve been playing it live for over a year before actually making the record.

Malka: I think the album is a reflection of everything we come from, whether before immersion—and immersion is electronic—and then our own collaborations. 

Colin: Yeah, there’s a lot in it. That’s what the title alludes to; it’s about now. We exist in very, very strange times. 

Malka: We’re not very nostalgic people, so we don’t like looking backward and repeating the past artistically. 

I find it interesting that there are all these commands or exhortations on the album—”use it don’t lose it”, “push the rock”. Even though they’re commands, they feel very warm and inviting, almost like invitations to peace or stillness. Do you think that’s something you were going for on this album?

Colin: The more we talk about this, the more it becomes clear—one of the things that we feel very strongly is that humanity is a whole. The more divided it is, the fewer possibilities it has. 

Malka: The people at the top are really trying to divide us. 

Colin: For what end? Not for the benefit of humanity as a whole. We face some serious problems as a human race. We are perfectly capable of destroying ourselves, if not half the rest of the life of the planet. Yet at the same time, we have the key between us to solve many problems. 

Malka: You were talking about stillness—it’s something within us, you know. If we start looking at nature, we can’t help but get out of the bubble and see the world in a more pure way.

Colin: Yeah. We don’t have any answers, but we feel that it should be the function of art to provoke, but provoke in a positive way. 

Right. It’s about challenging the listener to think more deeply about the issues at hand. I mean, the two of you have been around for a long time and have been making music for a long time. Did you ever envision things being where they are today?

Colin: [laughs] No, absolutely not. We were promised flying cars when we were kids. 

Malka: We don’t spend our time as humans looking to the future and building a picture; we just live in the moment, but [the record] is just saying what the fuck, because it’s hard to believe that things are how they are. Every day seems to be a new low. 

Colin: It’s incredibly sad. Maybe we’re too stupid to survive. 

Malka: Lots of people see the solution as excluding or not being generous.

Colin: A human being is not one thing. We have a vast diversity in humanity, but also, we are partial beings. No one person has all the answers. I mean, in some ways, Immersion works the way it works because [it’s] a genuine collaboration between us. We have different skill sets, and we bring those together consciously and intelligently with total respect for each other and as complete equals. 

One thing I read about this project is that both of you felt drawn to the facelessness of techno, or the namelessness of it —the idea that it’s a music that allows you to disappear behind. Do you still think that’s true of immersion to this day? 

Malka: We hate all the images and bollocks. Press can really suck, you know, because it’s all about how people look or how provocative [things are]. There’s very little attention paid to the purity of the music. 

Colin: The music industry in general is not really run for the benefit of the people making music or the people who consume. The music industry is basically run for the shareholders and the companies that are putting the music out. So much of it is completely opaque as to how anything happens or where the money goes. 

Given that Immersion are a project that very much removes the image or cult of personality from music, what do you offer that the other bands you’ve been in don’t? Is there some sort of creative impetus in Immersion that separates it from the other stuff you’ve done?

Malka: It’s a true collaboration. There’s no ego between us. I mean, every band has egos, which can create tension and can be a good thing, but in the end, it very often leads to the destruction of the project.

Colin: I think there is a big difference between us pre- and post-pandemic. In the pandemic, we kind of found something about how we were working together. The lines have been blurred between the fact that we are a couple and the fact that we make music together, and we also have a radio show. Everything is linked.

Malka: Also, it’s very direct. The way we speak, within the words or even the music, is very direct. We’re not hiding.

Colin: Yeah, we’re not trying to put a layer between us [and the audience] and say, ‘Oh, we’re these superior people and you don’t quite understand it, because you’re not really smart enough to understand our poetry.’ 

I know you were just talking about the radio show, swimming in sound. How has swimming in sound altered or influenced your own music?

Malka: It’s altered a lot! Because we appreciate every genre of music, and we are unconsciously influenced by things we love that we hear. It means that people our age who might say, ‘Oh, there’s nothing good anymore,’ can say there’s great music all the time, and it affects how we create music. 

Colin: We hear a lot of music that’s around right now, so yeah, we know who’s who and who’s doing what. There are a whole bunch of people we developed some kind of relationship with, and we play them on our show.

Malka: I mean, SUSS, we found through the radio, and we played them a lot and ended up talking to them and ended up collaborating—very unlikely collaboration, you know, [since they’re] ambient country and we come from electronic song structures. And the more you take the risk and do it, the more you feel like, ‘Yeah, we can do anything.’ 

You hear a lot of people say, ‘Oh, no good music comes out anymore.’ But it’s more of a ‘hate the game, not the player thing, because the music industry—like you alluded to earlier—is making it incredibly difficult for people who are purely passionate about just the music.

Malka: It’s true from our experience, and in a way, we do the radio show to say, ‘Look, there’s lots of great stuff. Listen.’

Colin: The list of bands and artists that we’ve discovered in the last five years is enormous. It’s absolutely enormous. None of them we’ve heard of before—90 percent. 

Malka: It’s very easy to get stuck in the past.

Colin: A lot of people, you know, when they get to be 18, they kind of stop getting into new music and stick with what they were into when they were 18. 

Malka: I’m amazed lots of young people are into old music! A lot. 

Colin: When we were young, and we were in our teens—say you go back to the 1960s—the idea that you would like music that was more than two or three years old was just absolutely shocking. To be listening to music that was 50 years old—it’s an absurdity. Music that is that old, 50 or 60 years old, is like common currency now. It’s fascinating, but you don’t want to be stuck in that, because the past is not anywhere you can live. 

It has to inform you, but not control you. 

Malka: Or limit you.

Colin: One of the things about being older artists, as far as the industry is concerned, is that you need to shut up and play the hits. None of this thinking you’re a new artist. To which we say: fuck that! 

Malka: We still play in small clubs to small audiences, and we’re okay with that. 

What’s next for you guys?

Colin: We have the tour coming up, and then that will all be over by December. We have some ongoing nanocluster collaborations. We tend not to talk about them before they become public. Then we actually did some recording with our old band Githead, and deliberately left it—didn’t work on any of the recordings—but we have started, within the last couple of months, doing a bit of work on that. There will be a very long-term project. 

Malka: Githead is more of a band than Immersion. In Githead, we just stand together and sing. 

Colin: We’re all for making our lives interesting and doing interesting stuff.