For every Ciecmate beat that's made it out into the world, there have been scores of others laying in wait, lurking, watching for the right MC. With Chess Sounds Vol.1, Ciecmate has brought his cunning creations out into the light, pairing them with the craftiest slew of MCs you could hope to assemble.

Named after his recently opened production house and re-cording studio, Chess Sounds features local artists such as the legend Brad Strut, label-mate and fellow Broken Tooth vi-sionary Newsense, Koolism's Hau, host of the Triple J Hip Hop Show, Westline Boomtown murkers Kings Konekted, the irre-pressible Trials of the Funkoars, and that dashing man with the razor tongue, Vents. Also bringing characteristic heat are local MCs Diem, Tornts, Maggot Mouf & Gutz. Joining this impressive line up is boom-bap hero Tame One (Artifacts/Weathermen), heavy-hitting underground mixtape maestro Termanology and one of the last remaining artists to do the New York sound justice, Little Vic.

The Pied Piper of Tight Rhyming, Brad Strut, executes the brilliant, stutter-spit 'I Need Change', tripping time ticking lyrics over an urgent, guitar driven and drum heavy beat. It's more proof that Strut the strategist is anything but typecast: versatile and evolving with each new track, it's easy to see why he's one of our best exports.

Spooked out strings and dirty, torn background cuts folding in and out of an ominous bass line: it can only be a joint featur-ing caustic soothsayer Newsense. Pouring scorn on the secu-rity theatre and deliberate misdirection oozing into our mass media and consciousness, 'Cause & Effect' pulls back the cur-tain on the jaw-dropping amounts of spin we're force fed, with its furious lyrics wrapped with the elegance of a stand-out beat.

A breath-snatching pan pipe refrain curls like smoke around 'The End of the World' featuring Termanology, Artisin and Gauge. A tickling organ murmurs to itself as each MC ripples multi-syllabic lines across the calmly curving surface of the beat. In contrast, 'Fly Him to God' with Little Vic takes all that understated serenity and turns it inside out, with stabbing blasts of crunchy rock noise meeting beat dropping syncopa-tion and superscript keys ribboning over it all.

As this blasts into the operatic doom of Fluent Form's 'After One Listen' and echoes back to the exotic 'Thoughts & Prayers' with Hau, you can see the breadth of Ciecmate's talent. We've slunk down dark alleys together, burst into the backstage area of the Next Big Thing, stumbling over drums, guitars and synths, picked ourselves up and continued hustling through the city out into rainy streets, pushing past the chaotic swells of Friday night drinkers and mouth breathers, into a moody club where bass lines bloom like bruises, staggering away, trip-ping, and landing into a dazzling street festival, miles away from where we started, flickering through the memories and bodies of others.
Who was that man? How did we get here? What was that journey? Ciecmate. Chess Sounds Vol. 1. And this is only the beginning.

Tracklist
1. Cause & Effect - Newsense
2. I Need Change - Brad Strut
3. Once Again It's On - Tame One
4. Focus (What It Look Like) - Trials & Vents
5. Trashem - Kid Selzy
6. Corporate Slang - Kings Kon-ekted
7. The Burn - Tornts
8. Divided - Diem
9. The End of the World - Termanology, Artisin, Gauge
10. True Story - Maggot Mouf & Gutz
11. Flesh & Bone - Dekoda
12. Move Along - Illuminate
13. Heaven's Gate Cortezes - Gargoyle
14. Thoughts & Prayers - Hau
15. Fly Him to God - Little Vic
16. After One Listen - Fluent Form
17. Don't Got Time for the Stress - Mata & Must