Immersion – What Is Lost Will Return (swim~)
The electronic duo’s eleventh studio album is probably their best so far and a contender for album of the year. First track ‘Nephology’ is funky bass driven and themed on a metaphorical analysis of clouds and their potential for change and transformation (hope) as well unpredictability, mystery and illusion. As has been their vocal pattern throughout their formation, Colin Newman provides the narrative while Malka Spigel sings the choral melody, a job she is apt to from her Minimal Compact days.
Single ‘We Don’t Need Your Validation’ is a sarcastic jibe at the social media and information age, where how many online followers one has defines one’s worth as a person, via external validation with Newman remarking, “We won’t tick the box required; we don’t need to be admired”. It’s the most Wire sounding song on the release, with Newman’s chiming guitar and both members singing in duet.
‘Megafauna’, as its name suggests, brings sounds of primordial wilderness through ambient jungle twang; as an instrumental piece it contains no vocals as a reflective pause in the middle of the track list. Final single and the title track ‘What Is Lost Will Return’ is reminiscent of the duo’s earlier ‘Nanocluster, Volume 2’ track, ‘Other Ways’ or their last album’s ‘How to Be’; whilst it maintains relative ambiental tranquility, it also contains an urgency in the form of electronic speed symbolic of a chaotic world and brims with Newman’s philosophy about division, labels and humanity’s ability to self-sabotage.
Towards the end of the track list, the Kraftwerk infused ‘Radio Signals’ continues the theme of chaos in a world gone mad, also having a personal meaning for the duo who host their own weekly radio show, ‘Swimming in Sound’; it’s the only track that sees Newman’s more overt singing. The album closes on the transistorial ‘Frequencies and Echoes’ of white noise and disembodied, distorted voices, a reminder of the playful innocence of humanity amidst a melancholic outlook. Not just being an electronic-ambient genre, Newman and Spiegel have also incorporated dance music and membranic melodies into their pourings of educative imaginings, which, when you think about it, is quite remarkable.
‘What Is Lost Will Return’ is available now on vinyl, CD and digitally.
© Ayisha Khan.