Cyst is a new outfit from UK-born artists Iglooghost & daisy* (fka BABii.) As long-term collaborators, Cyst is the pair’s highly rumoured duo project. 

Aside from a handful of elusive live sets over the past year, the only true glimpse of Cyst had been a cryptic feature on ‘Spawn01’ – a sleazy, hypnotic cut from Iglooghost’s ‘Tidal Memory Exo.’ 

After a long wait, the duo finally announces their first record ‘ᲘᲘ’ (pronounced ‘Rabbit’) on LUCKYME®. Despite being known for their usual subversive, hyper-kinetic electronic music – ‘ᲘᲘ’ sees the two artists occupying a sneaky, mischievous crevice of outsider hip-hop music. 

On ‘ᲘᲘ’, Cyst trade impish and surreal verses over home-made beats that feel like very distant future-relatives of the neurotic, experimental production from the likes of Anticon or Cannibal Ox. Despite a similarly pariah-like approach, there is little to no nostalgia-baiting on ‘ᲘᲘ’. The songs fizz with lab-engineered slapstick sound design and rubbery low-end booms. While the record feels texturally current, it revels in dodging the current landscape of rap or electronica’s stylistic tropes.

Cyst was largely inspired by an obsessive rediscovery of experimental hip-hop records that the pair grew up listening to that felt somewhat dismissed from the canon of trendier music.

“We got fixated on a really brief moment where weirdo hip-hop and IDM crossed paths at the very start of the millenium. We became really keen to excavate our favourite old records with this very distinct hybrid genre DNA. Presumably this moment in music quickly fizzled out due to the shows emitting too much body odour. We wanted to try and make songs that felt like a speculative continuation of computer music and mouthbreather hip-hop after a 20 year gap in the historical record.”

As a stark contrast to Iglooghost and daisy*’s usual fantasy-lands, ‘ᲘᲘ’ takes place in the grey, boring alleyways they pass through walking to the studio or to the shops. The pair drew lyrical inspiration from the mundane, ambiently stressful juggle of trying to make a rap album while raising their first baby. (Think trying to write bars while scraping dog shit off your shoe and cleaning up a spilled bottle of milk.) A recurring antagonist in the form of a cartoon bunny also appears in songs ‘Rabbit’ and ‘Pest’, who instead of boasting magical abilities is merely trying to scam them out of a publishing deal and deface their garden.