Wire’s Colin Newman has found a late-life resurgence of creative energy with Immersion, the Brighton, England, electronic duo he formed with his wife, Malka Spigel. Their latest release, Nanocluster Vol. 3 (swim~), is a sonically and thematically expansive transatlantic partnership with New York City ambient twang trio SUSS. The two acts are mobilizing their collaboration for a U.S. tour that kicks off March 14 in Austin at SXSW.
We cornered Newman for a quick chat before he hit the road.
Would you offer a brief history of Immersion?
Immersion first started in 1994 as a way for us to get involved in the electronic-music scene. We loved the way that, in the early days of techno, it was not image driven, and its exponents could be anyone from anywhere. In fact, at first, we were completely anonymous. Releasing on our own label enabled us to do whatever we liked. Through the ’90s, we embraced techno, breakbeat, drum ‘n’ bass and ambient, ending up with our most abstract album, Low Impact, in 1999.
Other things took over in the 2000s, and suddenly nearly 15 years elapsed before we re-embraced Immersion after we moved to Brighton in 2014. The project evolves all the time, and the music changes. Yet there’s a thread attached to where we started. Immersion has always been an open and equal collaboration, so part of its evolution has been to involve others, which naturally led to the whole Nanocluster idea. It’s a series of collaborations as both live events and recordings with diverse artists we feel an affinity with. Sometimes our collaborating artists have an aesthetic far from ours, but we see that as part of the challenge.
How did the collaboration with SUSS come about?
Besides working on music, we’ve also hosted—for five years already—a weekly two-hour radio show called Swimming In Sound on Slack City, what The Face magazine described as “the coolest station in Brighton—one of Britain’s coolest cities.” This has exposed us to a lot of amazing and diverse music we would’ve never discovered otherwise. SUSS was one such discovery. In fact, we’d been playing SUSS at least two years before anyone from the band noticed. As it happens, Bob Holmes from SUSS has a monthly podcast, and he invited us onto his show as guests. During the ensuing post-show chat, we told him about Nanocluster. The rest, as they say, is history.
The fusion of Americana and electronic music is quite unique. What were some of the challenges that came with making it work?
When we do these collaborations, we don’t necessarily think like that. On our radio show, we play a pretty diverse selection of stuff. There are also links between Immersion and SUSS, in that we’ve both done things that could be described as ambient—and we all have a fondness for kosmiche (krautrock), although it expresses itself quite differently in our two respective projects. We went far into the world of SUSS to find commonality—and then saw what we could bring of ourselves into that. On paper, it shouldn’t fly. But it’s music, not a theoretical blueprint.
The one thing all the Nanocluster albums have in common is that we finish and mix them. We do this with utmost respect for everything our collaborators have put into it. In this case, we had a quite extensive exchange of ideas, which led to a result we were all happy with.
You’re making a stop at SXSW this year. What have been your past experiences at the festival?
In 2023, we did a Nanocluster event with the one and only Thor Harris, as a prelude to what became part of Nanocluster Vol. 2. It was an amazing experience. We rehearsed at Thor’s house with his many cats and dogs and a tree house in the backyard. He’s a seasoned collaborator but also a fine human being. We did the show at Hotel Vegas, and it went way better than we’d hoped. People seemed to be really up for it.
What can audiences expect in the live setting?
All the previous Nanoclusters have had the performance first and the album coming after. This is the first time we’ve reversed the process—basically to make something we can tour in a more conventional way. The format remains the same, however: sets from both Immersion and SUSS, followed by the collaborative set. It’s a two-hour running time with no support band. The whole thing is the Nanocluster—that’s why you have to catch it from the start.
See Immersion and SUSS live.
