In 2021, San Francisco producer Brycon paired up with Japanese producer iLL Sugi to release a project called Music for Indoor Cats. This year, they came back together to release their second collaborative project, Devastating! Forces of Nature! They recenty took the time to talk to us about the project, how they initially met, and their process working together. Note: The portions of the interview with iLL Sugi used a translator.

A.D. Carson is an artist originally from Decatur, Illinois, but he now calls Charlottesville home where he works as Associate Professor of Hip-Hop & the Global South at the University of Virginia. He made some waves a few years ago when he submitted a peer-reviewed album for his dissertation at Clemson, Owning My Masters. While working as a professor, he’s also maintained his recording career, with his latest project, iv: talking to ghosts, coming out a little over a year ago.

Yarni is a producer from Sheffield who started releasing music in the mid-2010s. In that time, he’s had releases on EMK and Kartel, and he’s worked with artists like Thomas Scholz and Give Me Monaco. Just this past February, we got a full-length album form Yarni & Give Me Monaco called Parenthesis. Now he’s back with a solo EP, Albers EP. Albers was born out a different sort of collaboration for Yarni, as it sparked out of series of discussions and exchanges between Yarni and printmaker John Pedder.

Ben Buck is an artist from Austin who first got started attending Austin Mic Exchange when he was a teenager in the mid-2010s, and he’s never looked back since then. He had released a lot of one-off singles and some beat compilations through the 2010s, but it was really when he dropped his album Kilroy in 2020 that he took it up a level and really became an artist to watch out for in the Live Music Capital.

Ruby Wood is an artist from Huddersfield, UK who has spent most of the last decade as a vocalist with the Leeds group known as Sublime Motion Orchestra, as well as providing live and guest vocals for acts like Bonobo and Nubiyan Twist. Now she is finally stepping out on her own as a solo artist, dropping her debut EP, Sincerely, on First Word Records. To make the EP, Wood didn’t try to completely reinvent herself, but instead just stripped everything down and made sure her voice as a singer and songwriter were front and center.

K1NG ELJAY is an emcee/producer from Birmingham who started releasing music in the mid-2010s. Since that time, he’s established himself as one of the best all-around artists in Magic City, and he’s collaborated with a lot of different artists along the way. Most recently, he gave us an album called PTSD, which came out last year. It featured a lot of other Birmingham artists, but one in particular that stood out was a relatively new talent named Annise Courtney.

Werkha is a producer from Manchester who has been releasing music for about a decade. He’s had releases on Tru Thoughts, and he’s also produced for artists such as Bryony Jarman-Pinto and SheBeKeKe. He moved over to First Word Records with the release of his 2020 EP, The Rigour. A little over a year ago, he dropped his second full-length solo album, All Werk is Play. Now he’s back with a new project, Beat Tapestry.

Fat Tony is an emcee originally from Houston, now based in Brooklyn, who has been releasing music for the last fifteen years. In that time, he’s been as prolific as he’s been creative, and he’s worked with labels like Don Giovanni before making the move to Carpark in 2020. After releasing two projects that year, he’s been dropping all sorts of collaborative singles and one-offs here and there, but now he finally returns with a new full-length album done with producer Taydex, I Will Make a Baby in This Damn Economy.

Kendra Morris is an artist from New York who had an initial breakthrough in the early 2010s with a couple of albums put out on Wax Poetics. After finding her career a little bit of a limbo for a few years, Morris made a bold return to the spotlight in 2022 with the release of Nine Lives. After revisiting and expanding her self-released EP Babble earlier this year, Morris now returns with a new full-length album, I Am What I’m Waiting For.

Before Broken Bells, before Gnarls Barkley, even before The Grey Album, producer Danger Mouse teamed up with Brooklyn emcee Jemini to release an album on Lex called Ghetto Pop Life in 2003. This album had its fans back in the day, but the music quickly became eclipsed by the success of The Grey Album in 2004 and all of the subsequent projects that Danger Mouse took on over the years. Now after getting back to his hip hop roots with last years collaborative album with Black Thought, Cheat Codes, he has finally gone back to the beginning and re-teamed with Jemini for a brand new album, Born Again.