Back in 2015, Open Mike Eagle and Serengeti paired up as the duo named Cavanaugh to release an EP by the name of Time & Materials. The pairing worked incredibly well, drawing on their Chicago roots and love of abstract lyricism. While both artists remained prolific in their solo careers, we never got any sort of follow up to this first EP. Well, as it turns out, they had started to work on a second project, never finished, and then sat on the material as they tried to figure out what they should do with what they had. Fast forward to our current quarantine, and in light of lost tour dates and income, they decided to put out the rough draft that they had, simply titling the project Quarantine Recordings.

As you might recall, Open Mike Eagle not only rapped on the first Cavanaugh EP, he also provided the production for it. That continues on this project as well, with Eagle giving us another round of tasty lo fi spaced out beats. Because this project was never properly finished, OME mixed everything himself and didn’t master it, so things don’t sound as perfectly polished and balanced as they do on other releases. For other artists working in different styles, this might affect your ability to fully appreciate the music, but in the style that Cavanaugh are doing, with the smooth soul simmering just below the surface of these lo fi glitches and static, it somehow works. It also works that Serengeti and Open Mike Eagle complement each other well on the mic, with Eagle’s gentle croon and Serengeti’s blunt delivery giving you a nice yin and yang as they bounce ideas off of each other. Because of the unfinished nature of Quarantine Recordings, it’s easy to think of this as a brainstorming/jam session, with one of the two starting off with a concept such as “There’s no Q in Ecuador,” and just building from there. You don’t always want to hear this from every artist, but when you’ve got two distinct and talented voices like these two, it’s cool to see the creative process in the works.

We don’t need everyone to do a data dump during this quarantine, but when you’re sitting on rough drafts as good as Cavanaugh were, then we can talk. Maybe somewhere down the line we can finally get a proper finished project from the duo, but in the meantime, we get some really fun abstract poetry with an absurd sense of humor set to some nice lo fi beats.