by John Diliberto 2/28/2925
I suspect that when they were at their recording peak, German bands like Neu!, Cluster, Harmonia and Can did not think that their music would still be influencing bands 50 years later. But their combinations of improvisation, motoric rhythms and stratospheric melodies are still charging the music of groups like Stereolab, Moby, Khruangbin, Hot Chip, Ulrich Schnauss and many more. It was dubbed Krautrock and it generated a a music of rhythmic drive anchoring psychedelic explorations that were carving sound out of the universe.
Colin Newman and Malka Spigel both employed that influence in their respective bands: Wire, one of the seminal British groups of post-punk and new wave music in the 1980s, and Minimal Compact’s more new wave electronic designs. Now it appears in their current duo, Immersion.
SUSS is the American band who call their sound Ambient Country, with Bob Holmes on guitars, violin, harmonica and keyboards, Jonathan Gregg playing pedal steel guitar and Pat Irwin, who currently scores Showtimes Dexter: Original Sin) also on guitar and keyboards. While they are fans of Krautrock, it’s not a sound found much in their music, which can vary from deep ambient spaces to desert-dusted twang.
Both groups have come together on Volume 3 of Immersion’s collaborative series, Nanocluster. Nanocluster Volumes 1 and 2 included great collaborations with Ulrich Schnauss, Thor Harris, Laetitia Sadier, Tarwater, Scanner and Cubzoa. But Volume 3, with SUSS the only collaborators, is the most developed and exhilarating.
“State of Motion” is the clearest obvious homage to Krautrock. The rhythm track provided by Immersion sounds like Neu’s drummer, Klaus Dinger, is back there on the driving four-four groove while members of SUSS twang, slide and elaborate surf guitar on top. It has that exhilarating feel of flying down the Autobahn at 120 mph, minds blown.
While I have journalistically headed for the facile critical hook of Krautrock, there’s a lot more to this album. The two groups negotiate songs that weave slow-motion trance textures, like the opening track “Khamsin.” track “Khamsin.” That’s an Arabic term for a hot desert wind and you can hear a Middle Eastern feel in its modal drone with a swirling, nasal barber pole synth, topped by gentle guitar melody fragments. Then there’s the deep ambient meditations of “Luminous.” It mixes seagulls, synths, meditative guitar and pedal steel strains into a floating world that recalls Ashra’s “Ocean of Tenderness”. I hear elements of Cluster in this as well, with its faintly melodic guitar wandering like flotsam in an ambient stream.
“Cross Pollination” is the central track on the album. It opens with mellotron-like strings and fluttering flute lines, along with lonesome plains harmonica from Bob Holmes. The vaguely country guitar and pedal steel amplify the ambient western mood which elevates when the “Apache” drums come in. That circular rhythm drives the track into another level.
There are two vocal songs on the album, something you’d never hear on a SUSS recording. “In Between Us” is dream-pop-meets-country, with a steady drum pulse, growling low synths, intricate plaintive guitar patterns and the pedal steel guitar of SUSS’s Jonathan Gregg, both echoing and answering Malka Spigel’s vocal.
The other vocal is “In the Far Away,” a simply beautiful track built around a looped synth pattern, bifurcated by sliding electric guitar and pedal steel riffs. Spigel sings with such disarming serenity that she makes the Far Away seem like a place you would love to want go.
I really want to say that Nanocluster Vol 3 is a defining album of Ambient Country Krautrock, but I don’t think that’s going to go over as a genre name, plus, I think it’s deeper than that. They’ve created a true fusion of sounds and influences that has generated a psychedelic sound for the 21st century.
Hear or interview with Immersion and SUSS in the Echoes Podcast;