I’MMORTAL made “SWAMP MONSTER” after watching Pink Flamingos. John Waters’ cult film is a monument to bad taste, and its leading character, Divine, wears filth like armour. That idea stuck. “I love how leaning into filth was Divine’s armour against traditional society’s constructs,” the New York- and London-based artist says. “‘SWAMP MONSTER’ is a playful exploration of the unconventional. It’s about diving into the murky, taboo corners of your identity and reclaiming them as a source of strength.”
The track lives up to the concept. A gnarly electronic bassline anchors everything while a hard-hitting rhythm section crashes into forward-thinking synth lines and warped electronic textures. Over the top, I’MMORTAL’s whispery, haunting vocals pull it somewhere genuinely eerie. It’s rowdy and experimental in equal measure—a Halloween anthem that earns the label.
That push and pull between the grotesque and the danceable runs through everything she does. I’MMORTAL grew up in California playing violin in orchestras, picked up singing through high school musicals, and fell for EDM’s grittier, more synthetic end somewhere along the way. She has audio-visual synesthesia, which goes some way to explaining why the visual side of her work feels so fused to the sound. Her imagery tends to circle death and rebirth, the natural world against artificial constructs, femininity, and her AAPI identity—campy, but with real intent underneath. You can hear traces of Sevdaliza, Björk, Lady Gaga and Britney Spears in the mix, filtered through something closer to SOPHIE, Arca and umru.
“SWAMP MONSTER” was written and produced by I’MMORTAL herself, then mixed and mastered by Mikaelin Bluespruce, whose credits include Solange, Mariah Carey and Blood Orange. It follows a run of singles that have pulled in over half a million Spotify streams since her 2023 debut “Versace Spaceship”, alongside remixes, reworks, and support from the likes of NPR Music.
On this evidence, she’s only getting stranger and sharper and that’s exactly where she wants to be.
“SWAMP MONSTER” is out 2 October via Immortality. Listen it here:
