The String Cheese Incident & SunSquabi Share ‘Top Down’ Collaborative Single

The String Cheese Incident teamed up with SunSquabi for a new single entitled “Top Down.” The collaboration between the Colorado bands, which marks SCI’s first new music of 2020, came along with a Fear & Loathing style animated video created by Josh Clark.

The funky instrumental features all three members of SunSquabi along with Cheese’s Kyle Hollingsworth, Michael Kang and Jason Hann. “Top Down” premiered on Thursday via via ThisSongIsSick.com.

“‘Top Down’ came together over the course of nearly a year of remote sessions,” SunSquabi’s Kevin Donohue noted in a statement. “(SunSquabi’s) Josh (Fairman) and I created the main riff in the basement of my old house, sort of sussed out a framework of the track, and then sent it to Kyle (Hollingsworth). He took it to another place by adding organ, Rhodes, and layers of synths. After adding his parts, we went back and forth with the arrangement, changing subtle things until it really worked as a song, and that’s where Jason (Hann) came in and laid in the percussion tracks. Jason is a monster so, we created a little drum break to feature him there.

“After this, we recorded Chris (Anderson) on the drum kit and swapped and spliced all the midi drums which is really a signature part of our sound as SunSquabi is the drum thing (using both real and digital drums),” Donohue explained. “The final piece was (Michael) Kang with a cool glass of whiskey and some sweet shreddy licks to round out the melodic sections of the song. All in all, collaborating so closely with a band that we all grew up listening to and watching in Boulder, Colorado, was an absolute dream come true and we are so proud of how it turned out.”

“This was a blast, working with Kevin was so easy and organic,” added Kyle Hollingsworth. “He set up a great groove and I just played some melodies and solos on keys and voice box, and he compiled an awesome track! So much fun, let’s do it again!”

Check out the animated “Top Down” video below: