Kiyanosh: Track By Track – Dying Alone

Sydney-based Iranian rapper Kiyanosh has just dropped his new EP ‘Dying Alone’. We asked him to talk us through it, track by track:

Work Ethic (prod. Nubiyan Twist)

I remember listening to the Nubiyan Twist album Jungle Run when it came out. Incredible album, incredible band, and halfway through the song Brother there’s this moment where everything stops and they go into this phat groove that I couldn’t get out of my head, I felt like it needed bars on it. So I went home, looped it, and put bars on it. I wanted it to be concise and straight to the point. I’ve always felt like myself, but also kind of our generation as a whole, are the GOATs when it comes to procrastinating and having terrible work ethics. Plus I haven’t dropped a solo project for over three years, so it felt pretty fitting to have the first line on this project be “My work ethic is terrible”. 

4BAR4 Ft. Stoyan (prod. h.eund) 

The process of making 4BAR4 was as natural and effortless as it gets. Here’s the breakdown: Bekkie (h.eund) sends me some crazy ass beats. Stoyan comes over, and I show him said beats. An hour or two later, our parts are written and recorded. We send it over to Bekkie, who then somehow manages to make the song even wilder. Stoyan & I meet in an alleyway. 2 hours later, the music video is done. See kids? Making art is easy!…  

Guilt (prod. J Lindsay & Yianni)

I have a guilt problem. I feel bad for the dumbest, most insignificant things and play moments back in my head trying to reason with myself, and the whole song essentially represents that internal dialogue. I definitely didn’t intend to write about that, but Yianni & Josh (J Lindsay) went ahead and made a gorgeous song and it kind of just came out. 

B.O.O.F (For Khale) (prod. Kiyanosh, Doebas Petes & J Lindsay)

This is the first song I’ve produced myself, with the help of my boys J Lindsay & Doebas Petes of course. It’s a really personal song, I didn’t fully realise that till way later but it just kind of hit harder and harder over time, and for more reasons. The inspiration for this one I’ll probably always keep to myself, but if you were wondering, B.O.O.F stands for “Built Our Own Family”. 

KARMA (prod. shue) 

KARMA is essentially about not giving a fuck. Living without consequence. Losing faith in any sort of moral grounding in the world and choosing to see the world with that perspective, essentially choosing to be ignorant. It’s usually more fun being ignorant.

Dying Alone (prod. J Lindsay) We were finishing up the mixes for the project, and everything was sounding dope, but I knew it was missing something. I felt like I needed to round it off and I had a lot on my mind at that stage so I hit Josh (J Lindsay) up about it and a few days later he sent me the most fittingly melancholy beat I could’ve asked for. I wrote it in one sitting, and that was it. It’s a really important song to me. If there’s a song that narrows down & captures my perspective on things, right now at least, it’s probably Dying Alone.

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