Cyne (Cultivating Your New Experience) have been around for a while now, I was first introduced to their material on the very underrated label Botanica Del Jibaro, and later on the electronic label City Centre Offices. They’ve been described as warm, soulful and organic, happy to collaborate with other producers such as Daedelus, Nujabes and Four Tet.
Consisting of MC’ Akin and Cise Star, and producer duo Speck and Enoch, formed in 2001 in the swamps of Gainesville Florida, creating often politically charged honest music, with many influences from hey-day hip hop, krautrock, heavy rock to West African highlife. Their music seems to defy all boundaries, creating a hybrid of emotional, historical, and challenging influences. These boundaries defied include the geographic nature of this production, created between Florida and Miami, with many an exchange of emails, data files, mailed packages of new beats.
The music contained is their best to date, showing their diversity in sampling and live instrumentation, encompassing all their influences, with this release in particular, there is a greater impression from Ghanian and Nigerian Highlife sources, most notable on the tracks Calor and Runaway, making for an upbeat, positive journey that is both personal and political. This is a refreshing record, with so much negativity its great to find hip hop that is willing to put a positive spin on current affairs, personal journey’ and the continuing experimentation of the hip hop genre.
Wayne Stronell
