Nearly a year to the day since the release of their self-titled debut, Cleared now offer their second album Breaking Day.

Breaking Day is presented with the utmost highest production standards – mastered and cut to vinyl by Andreas [LUPO] Lubich at D&M in Berlin, pressed on high-quality virgin vinyl at RTI and housed in a heavy-duty old-style tip-on gatefold jacket printed by Stoughton. Also included is a free download coupon. LP is limited to only 500 copies.

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Native Philadelphian Steve Gunn has been a stalwart of the American experimental scene for closing in on a decade. He is known by many for his contributions as one half of the core duo behind GHQ (with Marcia Bassett) as well as for his many other affiliations with underground luminaries such as Tom Carter, the Magik Markers and Marc Orleans. Gunn has an incredible talent for fusing traditional American song structures with a raga influence, his playing effortless and his songcraft incredibly strong. His solo work began with some CDr and cassette releases and was followed with two incredible albums over the past years – Sundowner (Digitalis, 2008) and Boerum Palace (Three Lobed, 2009). Last year he released Sand City on Three Lobed, an album featuring him and percussionist John Truscinski. Gunn will release a new album of material on Immune in the near future.

Pakistani-born musician Ilyas Ahmed traffics a sound that borders on the folk/drone/raga/rock axis, one that Scottish critic David Keenan has called "gone". Currently residing in Portland, OR, Ahmed has released recordings on Immune, Time-Lag, Digitalis, and Root Strata. He is known to perform live with Honey Owens (Valet) and Jed Bindeman (Eternal Tapestry, Heavy Winged). Ahmed has recently been performing and recording in a duo with Liz Harris (Grouper). Last year Ahmed's first two albums Between Two Skies & Towards The Night were given a deluxe vinyl treatment by Immune.

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Walden Pond's Monk is the brand new album from Portuguese musician and composer Tiago Sousa. Following the limited vinyl-only album Insonia released in 2009 on German label Humming Conch, Walden Pond's Monk is the first album from Sousa released worldwide on both CD and LP formats.

Walden Pond's Monk is a piece that was composed and heavily influenced by the idealism and revolutionary spirit of Henry David Thoreau. The album is a natural evolution of the aesthetics already present in the previous album Insónia, while at the same time it reveals the maturity of a composer who consistently challenges himself.

On this album, Tiago Sousa maintains the same intuitive and spontaneous approach to the piano and remains convincingly impermeable to the normative formalisms of genre and academism. With Ricardo Ribeiro (clarinet) and Baltazar Molina (percussion), Sousa builds a piece in a continuous momentum, anchored on impressionist melodies of disarming simplicity and interrupted by a stormy improvisation.

During the thirty two minutes of Walden Pond's Monk, Tiago Sousa nourishes a romantic narrative based upon the essential ideas that Thoreau documented in works like Walden or Civil Disobedience: the profound respect for freedom and for the infinite expression of the possibilities of men. An unexpected encounter that outdoes the limits of an album and becomes roundly an artistic and personal manifest for Tiago Sousa. Walden Pond's Monk stands out not only because of the mature composition work, but also for the natural but yet surprising confluence between the aesthetics of the composer and the ideological concepts that he absorbed from Thoreau.

Tiago Sousa was initially known as the founder of Portuguese netlabel Merzbau, but in the last few years has been a very active solo artist. Always preferring the intuitive approach to music and stepping aside from the frontiers of genre and formal academism, he has become one of the most promising names in the Portuguese musical scene. Before his work with piano, Tiago founded the band Goodbye Toulouse and was part of the collectives Jesus, the Misunderstood, Sapien Sapiens and Macadame. He is also one of the Barreiro-based artists that belong to a generation that created and produced festivals like Out.fest and Barreiro Outras Músicas.

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Cleared was formed in the latter part of 2009 as a project meant to focus on repetition and patience as central elements of composition. Hess and Vallera have previously worked in various contexts of improvisational, long form and experimental music. Cleared is an effort to take the knowledge both have gained from these arenas in order to build hypnotic patterns of sound and rhythm.

The sessions that created the material for the initial tracks were made in Steven Hess's Chicago studio in an extremely straightforward manner of recording. Percussion, electronics, field recordings and other experiments were arranged and supplemented with synthesis and guitar. Frequently, parts of the original audio recordings were sampled and further manipulated back into the work. The result is a body of songs that are simultaneously familiar and indistinguishable in their instrumentation.

Steven Hess is a member of On (with Sylvain Chauveau), Haptic, Ural Umbo, and has recorded and performed with such artists as Pan•American, Stefan Németh (Radian), David Daniell & Douglas McCombs, Fennesz, Locrian, Dropp Ensemble, and Sylvain Chauveau. Steven has recorded for Type Records, Utech, Kranky, Thrill Jockey, Entr'acte and Digitalis, to name a few.

Michael Vallera has recorded for Catholic Tapes, Reverb Worship and Complacency Productions, and has performed with David Daniell,White Car, Sinkane, and Rhys Chatham. He performs solo under his own name, and received his MFA in sound from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in the spring of 2010.

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Not For Nobody is the third solo album from Chicago's Scott Tuma. Originally released on CD in 2008 by the Digitalis label, Immune is happy to present a first time vinyl edition of this essential work featuring new artwork by Chris Koelle.

Not For Nobody was greeted with critical acclaim upon it's release in 2008 and was the much needed follow up to Tuma's solo albums Hard Again (2001, Truckstop) and The River 1 2 3 4 (2003, Truckstop). Since the release of Not For Nobody Tuma has released the collaborative album Taradiddle (2009, Digitalis) with Mike Weis (Zelienople) and his fourth solo album Dandelion (2010, Digitalis).

Tuma is a luminary of the Chicago musical environment from his days as guitarist in pioneering Chicago alt-country band Souled American to his work in the Boxhead Ensemble and Good Stuff House (with Matt Christensen and Mike Weis of Zelienople).

immune recordings

Not For Nobody is the third solo album from Chicago's Scott Tuma. Originally released on CD in 2008 by the Digitalis label, Immune is happy to present a first time vinyl edition of this essential work featuring new artwork by Chris Koelle.

Not For Nobody was greeted with critical acclaim upon it's release in 2008 and was the much needed follow up to Tuma's solo albums Hard Again (2001, Truckstop) and The River 1 2 3 4 (2003, Truckstop). Since the release of Not For Nobody Tuma has released the collaborative album Taradiddle (2009, Digitalis) with Mike Weis (Zelienople) and his fourth solo album Dandelion (2010, Digitalis).

Tuma is a luminary of the Chicago musical environment from his days as guitarist in pioneering Chicago alt-country band Souled American to his work in the Boxhead Ensemble and Good Stuff House (with Matt Christensen and Mike Weis of Zelienople).

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Journey Through Astral Projection is the new Expo 70 studio album that follows the breakthrough album Where Does Your Mind Go? (Immune 011, Nov 2010) and was again recorded at Black Dirt Studios by Jason Meagher.

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Immune is proud to announce the release of Reverie, a brand new mini-LP release from Seattle based Rafael Anton Irisarri. These are the first new recordings from Irisarri since the Hopes and Past Desires 7" EP released in early 2009.

Reverie features two brand new compositions, "Lit A Dawn" and "Embraced" on Side A and an amazing side-long interpretation of the Arvo Pärt classic "Für Alina" on Side B. Irisarri has long been a student and listener of Arvo Pärt's approach to composition and has always been profoundly inspired by Part's tintinnabuli style. While working on a special "Day of the Dead" performance last year for the Seattle Art Museum Irisarri decided to perform some Arvo Pärt pieces with pianist Kelly Wise. While Wise performed "Fur Alina" on piano, Irisarri took some liberties with the piece and added new arrangements for drone guitar and electronics. The performance inspired Irisarri to return to his home studio and create new compositions to accompany the "Für Alina" piece. Reverie features piano, drone, electronics, and bowed/treated guitar. Irisarri began experimenting with guitar bowing techniques on the Hopes and Past Desires release and continues the approach here.

Irisarri will follow the release of Reverie with other releases on Miasmah and Room40. He also continues work on his Ghostly International project The Sight Below and has recently recorded with Goldmund for an upcoming release of Erik Satie pieces.

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Traba contains four tracks that were written at the end of the sessions for Navigare. When the deadline for completion of the album came and went these compositions were unfinished, but over the course of the summer and autumn of 2009 they were completed in Scott's o3o3o Studio in Cambridge. Traba continues and expands on the themes of submergence, being lost at sea, and intoxication.

Opening track "She Came From The Sea", with it's distant swirling brush stroke drumming, haunting vocals and deep processed textures, captures the almost overwhelming physicality of being at sea, miles from home, yearning for loved ones and a physical embrace. Though this is the first track on the record it was the last one to be written and completed after the Navigare sessions.

"The Water Loop" tackles themes of addiction, obsession and urban decay via a Max/MSP manipulated loop that initially feels warmly narcoleptic but grows into something anxious and intimidating. The music evokes warmth and adventure but slowly unfolds into a dark tone of emotional weakness and paranoia. An influence of Stanley Kubrick shines out here as this is a musical landscape occupied by Droogs on Molotov cocktails threatening to impose themselves on you.

"Lamina" is about a short spell of tinnitus that Scott had which resulted in a brain scan. The uncertainty of what caused the hearing damage mixed with the possibility that something had indeed grown inside his brain affected Scott in a heavy way. "Feeling like I had half of my head submerged underwater somehow matched the themes I was writing about so it inspired me to finish the track. Luckily my head was fine and the frequencies returned just in time to mix the piece". The digitally processed acoustic instruments are blended together with field recordings taken from his local East Anglian Coast line as well as vocal samples. These elements ebb and flow until the smoldering finale that recalls the sinister imagery of the Quay Brothers, David Lynch or the Brothers Grim.

Scott's uncle was a submarine officer in the British Navy who died of alcoholism. His life away at sea fueled his fraught family life and kept his battle with drink alive until his death. Traba's closing track "An Avalanche" is directly inspired by the moment his uncle's heart stopped. Coming ashore after months at sea, his uncle drank himself to death. He was brought to a hospital where he was shortly brought back to life, but quickly returned to his death bed as a direct result of his eldest son's disapproval.

Traba is truly a dense collection of songs from Simon Scott.

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Tape and Bill Wells first met in Stockholm while Bill was performing his music with The Concretes and Jens Lekman. Both artists were aware of each other's work and upon this first meeting they spoke of collaborating together on a recording. A year later Bill invited Tape to perform three concerts together at Triptych Festival in Scotland. During their visit a day was spent recording at Ca Va Sound in Glasgow. Those recordings were the start of something truly special. In 2008 Bill traveled to Stockholm to again perform some concerts with Tape and it was during this visit that a week was spent recording at Tape's own Summa Studio. It was the recordings from this session that became Fugue. The four tracks selected were the ones where the music sounded like something completely of it's own, something other than Bill Wells or Tape. With the use of piano, organ, Fender Rhodes, guitar, bass, electronics, drums and synthesizer Fugue is truly a unique and timeless recording from these legendary and prolific artists. Simplistic, searching and fragile.

Bill Wells is a self-taught musician from Falkirk. Bill first became involved in the Jazz scene of Central Scotland, backing artists such as Bobby Wellins and Bruce Adams. In 1989 he formed the Bill Wells Octet, which featured most of Scotland's leading Jazz musicians at the time, as well as London based players such as Harry Beckett and Lol Coxhill. He then started working with Glasgow bands such as The Pastels and Future Pilot AKA and has since gone on to record for a variety of labels such as Domino, Geographic, Leaf, Creeping Bent, Karaoke Kalke, Textile, P-Vine and Wee Black Skelf.

Bill Wells has toured the world with a wide variety of musicians such as the Japanese band Maher Shalal Hash Baz, Swedish singer/songwriter Jens Lekman, and German electronica musician Stefan Schneider. Bill is currently a member of the Isobel Campbell / Mark Lanegan band and he has ongoing projects with the Bill Wells Trio, The National Jazz Trio Of Scotland, Aidan Moffat, and a line up including Annie Whitehead, Stefan Schneider and Barbara Morgenstern. Last Summer he began work on a recording featuring Jim O' Rourke on guitar. Bill has also worked with Kevin Ayers, Richard Youngs, Teenage Fanclub, Evan Parker, Arab Strap, David Tibet, Frida Hyvonen, Kid Loco, Barry Guy, Jad Fair, Bridget St John and Benni Hemm Hemm.

Swedish trio Tape was formed in 2000 by brothers Andreas and Johan Berthling with Tomas Hallonsten. Taking cues both from pop, experimentalism, and minimalism their sound has become recognized internationally and is clearly something of its own. Their first album Opera was released on the Häpna imprint (which Johan is a co-owner of) in 2002. Working intuitive, all by themselves, they created mini symphonies out of electronic sounds paired with a stunning melodic lyricism. With an array of electronic and acoustic instruments at hand they have gone on to release three additional full length albums (Milieu, Rideau, and Luminarium). In 2006 they collaborated with Japanese duo Tenniscoats for their album Tan-Tan Therapy. The same year they recorded in Tokyo with Japanese quartet Minamo for the album Birds of a Feather. Tape are truly masters of their craft.

Tape's Johan Berthling also plays in the Sten Sandell Trio (with pianist Sten Sandell and drummer Paal Nilssen-Love) as well as the group Fire! (with Mats Gustafsson and Andreas Werliin). He is also a member of the live band of El Perro Del Mar and Taken By Trees (along with Tape's Tomas Hallonsten).

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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.

immune recordings

Swedish trio Tape was set up in 2000 by brothers Andreas and Johan Berthling with Tomas Hallonsten. Taking cues both from pop, experimentalism, and minimalism their sound has become recognized internationally and is clearly something of its own. Their first album Opera was released on the Häpna imprint (which Johan is a co-owner of) in 2002. Working intuitive, all by themselves, they created mini symphonies out of electronic sounds paired with a stunning melodic lyricism. With an array of electronic and acoustic instruments at hand they recorded at a small stone barn on the island of Öland, east of Sweden. 2003 saw the release of Milieu, recorded at the very same barn. These recordings had a more arranged feeling and a clear pop sensibility in some parts. In 2005 they went to Cologne to have Marcus Schmickler produce and record their third album Rideau. This was done in his Piethopraxis studio in Cologne and his involvement left traces; an almost architectonical approach was taken and some of the intimacy that characterized the first two albums were replaced by a harder edge.

In 2006 they collaborated with Japanese duo Tenniscoats on their album Tan–Tan Therapy. The same year they recorded in Tokyo with Japanese quartet Minamo, which resulted in the record Birds of a feather. In the years, their touring has taken them to places like Japan, Taiwan, USA and most parts of Europe.

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.

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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.

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