Immaterialize – Perfect
Immaterialize is the “pillowy” (Bandcamp) duo of Lipsticism (aka Alana Schachtel) and DJ Immaterial (aka Erik Fure). Following a trail of singles which received praise from The Needle Drop, The Line of Best Fit, Brooklyn Vegan and more, Immaterialize return to announce their debut album, Perfect, out January 23rd via Angel Tapes / Fire Talk and present their new single/video, “Cheesecake Factory.”
Perfect is a compact, nine-track debut that straddles an atemporal ambiance with hypermodern references.
“Cheesecake Factory” is an early album standout, growing into a blown-out anthem with its heart on its sleeve. “Normal night, 13, Cheesecake Factory,” Schachtel begins, before the track reaches its cathartic climax. Like many of the tracks across Perfect, “Cheesecake Factory” confronts memory, grief and death through shrouds of evocative cloud-pop.
In addition, Immaterialize present a self-directed video for “Cheesecake Factory,” collaging VHS footage of the band inside the titular dining establishment. The “Cheesecake Factory” video is another installment in Immaterialize’s singular vision, which coalesces audio and visual experiences to form a refined artistic statement. Of the track, Schachtel says: “When Erik showed me the early workings of this song it instantly felt reminiscent of a certain time in my life. This was a time heavily influenced by loss and the lyrics explore grief in a public setting, experiencing something so new and abnormal for oneself in very ‘normal’ and ‘business as usual’ settings.”
Perfect — the debut album from Chicago pop experimentalists Immaterialize — is over a decade in the making. Schachtel and Fure’s years of sporadic collaboration gave way to their emergence in 2024 with a pair of songs, lifted from a larger batch that they were keen on polishing. These sessions resulted in Perfect, a debut album that sounds like nothing else produced in Chicago, the duo’s homebase and epicenter for all things indie and rock. And while these deep roots can be traced back to Perfect, the shapes Immaterialize twist form a vision entirely their own.
To craft Perfect, Immaterialize eschewed prior conceptions of what entailed writing and recording, opting away from traditional band structures and instead insisting on the strength of the duo and a few key collaborators. Alongside Schachtel and Fure, the duo enlisted studio stalwart Michael Mac for additional vocal processing, and welcomed Angel Marcloid aka Fire-Toolz into their creative process as well. Marcloid mastered Perfect at Angel Hair Audio, and also contributed bass and songwriting to the remarkable album opener “Everything But Myself.” Alongside these two collaborators, who encouraged the duo to abandon a precious recording process, Perfect was recorded at home entirely by Immaterialize themselves.
Perfect recalls the Danish dreamscapes of Fine and Snuggle, but Immaterialize anchor their album with an authentically American abjection. Each track cloaks an inner exhaustion with layers of processed vocals and ethereal production. Some tracks began as dreams, and their phantasmic genesis extends across the album’s haunted, reverb drenched soundscapes. Elsewhere, they examine behavioral patterns and the resistances we all desire in the face of change, loss, and love. It’s a tender exploration that never shies away from the ugly facts of life, instead sitting with these emotions and inspecting what can be gleamed in their wake.
Each artist remains extremely prolific with their respective solo projects — Lipsticism’s latest album, Wanted To Show You, was released earlier this summer via Phantom Limb, and DJ Immateriali’s Post-Op LP came out this past October — but Perfect found them both at a time where they were able to hone in and craft their first joint outing as Immaterialize. To celebrate the release of Perfect, Immaterialize will make their long-awaited return to the stage at Schubas on January 30th for an Angel Tapes showcase alongside labelmates Jawdropped, Retail Drugs, Starcharm, and ira glass.
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