SPIGEL*NEWMAN*COLIN*MALKA: Live (CDR on Swim Records)
During the autumn of 1998, a rare event transpired: Colin Newman and Malka Spigel embarked on a European tour, their first return to the stage together since Newman's "It Seems" concerts in 1988. The result was quite a departure for Newman, featuring live guitars and his own vocals. Although no recordings were made during this tour, Newman and Spigel decided to recreate these gigs at home, enhancing the performance with studio mixes.
In 1999, they released 51 minutes of this live recreation as a special CDR, available only from Swim Records through mail order. This release is truly a wondrous creature.
With a full sonic repertoire of guitar, bass, keyboards, and E-perc, this music not only recalls classic material, these performances embellish the tunes with refinements and exaggerations which add brilliance to an already glaring shine.
Newman's versatile guitar manipulations are superb, generating lush clouds of pulsating strumming. The E-perc is simplistic, but tastefully effective with its nimble rhythms. The keyboards are subtle, hiding in the billowing waves of amazing guitar riffs. Treatments are not as heavyhanded here; by understating the delivery the listener is afforded an intimate glimpse at the core of these mesmerizing sounds.
Several songs feature vocals by Malka and Newman, her voice lending a sensuous flair while his singing is dreamy and articulate.
The song selection draws from Newman's "Bastard" CD, Spigel's solo releases, and includes the Immersion track "Water Walker". The "Encore" is a tense rendition of Wire's classic tune "Outdoor Miner"-not to be missed!
COLIN NEWMAN: Bastard (CD on Swim Records)
This 1997 release features 51 minutes of Newman prime.
Employing guitar, bass, keyboards, and percussion in tandem with electronics, Newman produces an excursion into instrumental pop music of particularly odd quality. The dominant guitar is frenetic and clever, often chasing the hyper-percussives around the mix like a Keystone Cops comedy.
Newman's riffs are luscious and delicate. His performance is calculated to be elusive; his style refuses to fall into easy description, mutating pop with dense moods and infusing electronica with a playful personality.
Each sound blends into the next, merging contrary instruments into wholly new sonic identities. This is one of the maximum charms of Newman's music: his ability to produce the unexpected with traditional tools.
This music growls with frolic and exuberance, capturing celebratory emotions and harnessing them with serpentine energy and electrified dazzle.
IMMERSION: Oscillating ((CD on Swim Records)
On this 59 minute release from 1994, Newman and Spigel apply themselves to instrumental music that distorts techno rave music with rhythmic deceleration and intellectual qualities.
Electronic waves and weirdling effects merge with softly sinuous E-perc and experimental guitar torture. (Actually, it's often difficult to identify Newman's guitar, since his style eludes traditional guitar sounds like a tiny fish escaping a wide-mesh net.) Meanwhile, the electronics are versatile and sneaky, flowing from simple cycles into dense platforms of trembling power. Keyboards are sometimes discernible.
Upon deconstruction, these synthetic sounds are deceptively simple if perceived alone. Together, though, they coalesce with incredible fluency, rousing an amazing lushness that can be dizzying. From metronomic rhythms and squealing feedback, Newman and Spigel build intricate passages of mesmerizing beauty that reach far beyond those basic tempos to achieve intricately multilayered melodics.
This music transcends average techno or contemporary electronic venues, generating a nesting place in virgin territory. This has always been Newman's signature: producing music that defies codification. Despite this music's definable simplicity, the result is massive and impressive.
Although the general tone here is languid and dreamy, there are some compositions that bristle with vigor. These energetic properties are then covertly sedated until they vibrate with the strain of riffs under compression.
Also available (on Swim Records) is "The Remixes, Volume 1", a 70 minute CD by Full Immersion in 1995. This features elaborate and dazzling remixes of tracks from Immersion's "Oscillating" release by g-man, Claude Young, Telepathic, Mick Harris, Mark Gage (aka Vapourspace), Trawl, Iris, Craig Wharton, Intens, and Immersion itself.
IMMERSION: Low Impact (double CD on Swim Records)
This 1999 release sees Newman and Spigel exploring a different realm of electronic music: the beatless regions far beyond rhythmic turf.
Although percussives play a part in this music, the target sound this time is one of pure trance. Most of the sounds are electronically generated, falling into the "drone" class. These tonalities surge and cascade, accompanied by other weirdness of a muted nature.
The resulting compositions are sedate and hypnotic, yet possess a restrained power which one can perceive seething just beneath the surface. Imagine ambience with an industrial flair.
This music taints contemplation with a strong air of spatial isolation, removing the listener from the earthly plane and immersing all in a state of edgy calm. This tuneage is like chill-out for non-corporeal consciousness.
None of which should be taken to imply that this music is lacking in melodic content. In fact, the submerged harmonic qualities are deeply defined and sinuous in nature.
The main CD is 62 minutes long, while "Backflip", the bonus disc, features 29 minutes of rare ("2nd Immersion", a twelve-inch record from 1995) and unreleased tracks from that same period. This older material is more rowdy in temperament, representing a livelier Immersion with stronger beats and decisively uptempo riffs. Here, traditional instruments are used in equality with electronics to achieve the jarring trance state.
ORACLE: Tree (CD on Swim Records)
This incarnation predates Immersion with a line-up of Newman, Spigel, and Samy Birnbach (also from Minimal Compact). This 1993 CD bears strong prescience to what would come in Immersion, but here the sense of tension is flavored with a peppier sentiment for these 61 minutes of quivering music.
Keyboards, guitar, bass, and percussion are appreciable as recognizable entities. Granted, the guitar is squeezing out very strange sounds, and the bass is rumbling with extra fuzziness. The drums are steadfast, but muted. Keyboards sweep with droning qualities, oozing with fluid attributes. An undercurrent electronic weirdness touches everything, either directly or by association, lending an otherworldliness to it all.
There are even lyrics. Spigel's voice carries from a distance, rich with timbre and verve. Newman's dry vocals and Birnbach's astral voice are also present as enhancing counterpoints to Spigel's lilting range.
Quirky compositions are the key note here. Applying severely high-brow capacity to normal pop music, Oracle produces haunting melodies drenched with a wonderful sense of lively fun.
MALKA SPIGEL: My Pet Fish (CD on Swim Records)
This 1998 CD features additional instrumentation and source material provided by Mark Gage (aka Vapourspace), Benjamin Lew, Robin Rimbaud, Ian Hartley (aka Lobe), and Ben Newman (pre-teen son of Spigel and Newman). Other instruments and manipulation during this 57 minutes of strange music are supplied by Spigel and Newman.
Here, the music is more upfront and accessible...with trancey twists and intimate tingling coating the tunes like cosmic honey. Strange guitar, grumbling bass, swimming keyboards, and gyrating drums constitute the primary instruments with Spigel's spiraling vocals injecting a Middle Eastern flair to the catchy melodies.
Again, electronic effects and sonic tinkering envelope the whole, transforming songs with an ethereal shimmer.
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