The dreampop of Immersion on What Is Lost Will Return combines the faded seaside glamour of England’s south coast with a European sensibility. The new album from Malka Spigel (Minimal Compact) and Colin Newman (Wire) maintains a detached air of magic realism while holding to familiar anchors.
“Nephology” opens on a line that will not be hurried. The steady motion is accompanied by Newman talking about clouds in the way that Robert Wyatt once reflected on Wiltshire’s porcine housing. The structure creates space for reversed sounds to float and spread. It’s all so much vapour.
“Breaking Free, Diversity, Evolution” brings Ed Chivers in on drums. The lyric treats borders and other structures as useful fictions to be transcended. It’s a sing-along reply to the regressive billionaire-sponsored politics of the mid-2020s. “We Don’t Need Your Validation” continues the intellectual theme with the sharpest three minutes on the record – a pulse aimed at follower counts and door policies designed to keep your dopamine levels within prescribed thresholds.
The instrumentals stop the album turning into a polemic. “Megafauna” is the dark middle: dub weight under guitar that looms. A flute line refuses the pastoral, while a synth does the work of a didgeridoo. Matt Schulz (Holy Fuck) covers much of the kit; and, on this track, the drums feel like the foundations of a space rock epic. “Childsplay” and “Frequencies & Echoes” finish the run with modular colour and guitar sanded of rock-and-roll gloss.
The title track talks up differences without a pamphlet. “Radio Signals” asks who is actually on the other end of the dial. The production stays spare – pads against programmed and live drums, with guitar used as rhythm as much as lead.
Like a lenticular image, this is an album for dark rooms and open spaces. How it appears depends entirely on how you approach it.