ALL RELEASES CAN BE ORDERED HERE ON THE IMMUNE WEBSITE
Immune-005 : Steven R. Smith "Cities" LP
Cities is pressed on high quality virgin vinyl at RTI in an edition of 900 copies for the world. Included is a free MP3 download coupon.
American multi-instrumentalist Steven R. Smith has been releasing a steady stream of solo records for well over a decade as well as playing in various improvisational groups including Thuja, Hala Strana, and most recently Ulaan Khol. This music has ranged from sparse solo guitar improvisations to Hala Strana’s reworkings of Eastern European traditional folk tunes to the dense, psychedelic fuzz guitar workouts of Ulaan Khol. On his latest full-length solo release, Cities, Smith combines the composed with the improvisational and the result is a beautiful and desolate collection of songs evoking a crumbling landscape reminiscent of Cormac McCarthy’s novel “The Road” or the films of Hungarian director Béla Tarr.
Cities was recorded in Smith’s Worstward Studios on all analog equipment and features a wide variety of instrumentation including fretted spike fiddle, baritone psaltery, electric and nylon stringed guitars, cello, melodica, electric piano and organ.
Musically, Smith’s work over the years could be summed up as a struggle to contain a series of opposites: light and darkness, sorrow and joy, despair and hope. It is this balance, or at least the effort to create or maintain this balance, that informs Cities as well. Smith has recorded for numerous labels including Important Records, Catsup Plate, Soft Abuse, Emperor Jones, Last Visible Dog, Jewelled Antler, Digitalis and Darla. Cities is his first release for Immune Recordings.
“one of America’s great hidden artists.” - Dusted Magazine
“Smith’s cinematic sound taps into a huge well of American music and simultaneously forges ahead with fruitful experimentation, clearing new ground.” - Ptolemaic Terrascope
“Smith [has a] deft ability to extort haunting beauty from the strings of modified instruments, bowing, scraping and plucking his way through” - Boomkat
“a rich and washed out soundscape of wheezing melancholy melodies all wrapped up in a dense sonic fog…plenty dark and enigmatic, lovely and mysterious.” - Aquarius
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Immune-004 : Tape "Luminarium" LP
Luminarium is pressed on high quality virgin vinyl at RTI in an edition of 500 copies for the world. Included is a free MP3 download coupon.
Luminarium is Tape’s fourth album and it was recorded in their Summa studio in Stockholm. The album was released on CD by Häpna in 2008. Immune is proud to release the album on vinyl for the first time. Tape is currently in the studio recording a follow-up album for release later this year.
“Tape organically blend balsa-light acoustic textures (guitars, percussion, winds and brass) with a range of organs and a gentle yet firm digital pressure.” - WIRE
“The only really useful comparisons to make would be to other Tape albums, and Luminarum finds this unique Swedish troupe at least equalling, if not bettering the genre-defying work they’ve made their name with. Amazing stuff.” - Boomkat
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Immune-003 : Rafael Anton Irisarri "Hopes and Past Desires" 7"
Immune is proud to announce the release of Hopes and Past Desires, a two song 7" from Seattle based Rafael Anton Irisarri. This brand new material follows Daydreaming (released in 2007 on Norwegian label Miasmah) and is limited to 500 copies. Recorded in early 2008 in both Seattle, WA and Manchester, UK the title track features the string arrangements of Danny Norbury while "Watching As She Reels" features the cello of Nan Scwarz. Rafael is currently working on another full length album and just released an album on Ghostly International under the name of his other project The Sight Below.
Boomkat Review
The man behind The Sight Below (and, of course, the excellent Daydreaming album on Miasmah) returns with a gorgeous, limited edition 7" for new Chicago imprint, Immune. The Seattle-dwelling composer teams up with Dany Norbury for 'Hopes And Past Desires', a mesmerising, hauntingly beautiful piece of music comprised of exchanges between muffled electric piano chords and Norbury's otherworldly, reverberant strings. In terms of its constituent parts this is an incredibly simple piece of music, but there's magic in these grooves, and Irisarri's music makes a resoundingly haunting contribution to the realm of electronic/modern classical composition. Flip over and 'Watching As She Reels' is suggestive of a more upbeat take on Deaf Center's Pale Ravine, or perhaps a more minimal Library Tapes; there's a certain sepia-tinted quality to these sounds, and the whole exercise seems soaked in memory and a sense of nostalgia (for something or other) that always manages to avoid outright sentimentality. Absolutely sublime music - pick one up while you can.
"Irisarri, who cites Mahler, Debussy and Ravel as influences, combines rustling static, haunting piano melodies, a gleeful slide guitar and at times even glitchy shynthesizer sounds to evoke a Lynchian otherworldliness" - Foxy Digitalis
The 7" is limited to 500 copies for the world and clocks in at nearly 12 minutes. >>>ORDER HERE<<<
Immune-002 : Micah Blue Smaldone "The Red River" CD/LP
The Red River is the third album from Portland, Maine’s Micah Blue Smaldone and the first on Chicago label Immune. His first album, 2003’s Some Sweet Day, was a collection of Ragtime & Country-Blues, a fervently authentic homage to great influences – John Jackson, Blind Blake, Robert Wilkins; while 2005’s Hither and Thither was much more internal, an urgent telling of germination in a harsh climate. The Red River reaches a little further both into the past and the future and was mostly written upon returning from an 11 week European tour in the winter of 2007. The album confronts the malevolence we’ve come to accept in our nature perhaps more out of cynicism than of true understanding. It tells hard tales gently, and in the end offers faith in our capacity for goodness. The album features accompaniment by many fine Portland musicians, including the members of Fire on Fire (Young God Records), a group Micah also plays with. Micah has recently appeared on the new Jack Rose album and just finished a tour supporting Death Vessel (SubPop) where he also played in the Death Vessel band.
Check out his WFMU studio session HERE.
NPR Review
"On The Red River, Smaldone sings with an achy, folk-tinged voice - weary but wise - as he explores a world he sees as deeply troubled but ultimately brimming with hope." - NPR Second Stage
BBC Review
"beneath the veneer of dusty Americana there's a song-cycle carrying a heart-of-darkness travelogue filled with terse observations about the malevolent force within us all that slips off the leash with a depressing regularity." - BBC
Dusted Review
"Smaldone plays guitar and sings with a simplicity that underlines, rather than contradicts, the drama. You feel that with The Red River, he is finally getting comfortable with his folk-inspired palette of influences, stretching them out to fit, and making them his own." - Dusted Magazine
Foxy Digitalis Feature and Review
"an original voice in a world full of pretenders." - Foxy Digitalis
The Red River is available on CD in a mini-LP style gatefold jacket with 8 page booklet and on LP pressed on high quality RTI vinyl and released in an edition of 500 with lyric insert and download coupon. The LP version is now sold out!
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Immune-001 : Death Vessel "Stay Close" LP
Immune is proud to present it's first release - a first time LP pressing of the debut record from Death Vessel. The vinyl version of "Stay Close" is limited to 500 copies and contains an exclusive bonus track not available anywhere else. High quality RTI pressed vinyl!
Death Vessel's new album Nothing Is Precious Enough For Us is availble now on SubPop.
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