Catching up over the phone with Known Associates, it’s little surprise to find them hard at work.

MC and producer Ciecmate, MC Maggot Mouf and DJ No Name Nathan are ensconced in the studio, but not to record. Instead, they’re shooting a video for ‘No/Live In The Studio’, the latest single from the trio’s debut album together, ‘Ashes To Dust’. Ciecmate explains that they’re filming the clip in one take, but with multiple cameras. The intention is for simplicity with the extra cameras adding depth – an elegant approach that reflects Known Associates’ overall MO.

Theirs is a dark, paranoid rap music, flexing its bass to rhymes straight-shot at the listener. Anyone who’s listened – or better yet, seen the video – to ‘Ashes To Dust’s lead single of the same name will understand how compelling a combination it is.

“I grew up on hip hop with drums that made you feel like you were getting slapped,” Ciecmate explains. “People will say that the concepts we’re using on the album are dark, but they’re only dark because people don’t want to talk about the reality of what’s happening around us … We’re not very dark people but the sound of the music we make has aggression and attitude to it.

“I see music as therapy. I’ve written songs that no one’s going to ever hear. That’s the beauty of having a studio. So I guess in terms of the overall sound, yeah it has a dark quality to it.”

Ciecmate’s output under his own label, Broken Tooth Entertainment, has always played in the shadows. But it’s natural to wonder if Ciec and Mouf’s methodology contributed to the gloom. The duo would meet every Tuesday evening for a year and sometimes work straight through to the following morning.

“We could be in the studio for 14 hours at a time,” Mouf explains. “It took its toll but it was worth it, that’s for sure.”

“We were sick of saying that we’d meet up every couple of weeks or so,” Ciec adds. “We locked it in: every Tuesday night, set it aside, and we’d just bang it out. And we did it. The premise would be to pick out one of the beats I already had or write a beat, and then we’d write a whole track. We’d record the song then and if we liked it we’d either re-record it later or leave it as it was. Pretty much every song on the album was written and recorded in one night, except for maybe two.”

Spending that intensive time together certainly contributed to the album’s most distinctive feature – Ciec and Mouf’s engaging lyrical interplay. Their verses are whittled down to short counter punches, one MC constantly handing off to the other. It’s something Ciec thinks there’s not enough of in Australian hip hop.

“It’s one of those things where people will go, ‘Let’s do a song’. But instead of sitting together and writing a song, one person goes off to write his 16 bars, the other person goes and writes his 16 bars, and then they hope once they record them that they sound similar but not too similar.

“It’s like bumping into an old friend and saying, ‘Let’s catch up on Facebook’, instead of, ‘Let’s catch up now’. So the whole point was that he’d come up with four bars and then wouldn’t be able to think of another four, so I’d jump in there, and then vice versa. And the songs just tend to write themselves when you approach them like that.”
Once the tracks were completed, Ciec and Mouf laid out some ideas for cuts and presented them to Nathan.

“That was cool and worked well,” Ciec says. “But next time we do an album we’ll have Nath with us throughout the process, because then he could tee up a few ideas at conception time rather than grafting them on at the end.”

The trio are now weighing up their tour options, although nothing is set in stone just yet. Right now, it’s simply about getting the record into people’s hands.

“We’ve got a show with Masta Ace next month that we’re pretty fucking stoked about,” Mouf says. “But as far as releases go and tours, we always like to release and then at least give it a few months, let people build a vibe to the songs and then do a launch that actually has some impact – you see people in the front row saying the lyrics. That’s always great.”

‘Ashes To Dust’ is out this Friday May 17.