⌭ IceMorph ⌬ Are Building A World Of Their Own

The anonymous electronic duo on musical chemistry, internet identities, and their debut project 'Prototypes'.

Somewhere between club music, internet mythology and a healthy disregard for genre, IceMorph are carving out a world of their own. The duo first crossed paths online in 2022, communicating through layers of aliases and usernames before realising they were on the same musical wavelength. Born out of CloudCore, the pair have since developed a sound that moves between skippy, bass-heavy club tracks and more introspective, hard-to-place electronics, held together by a distinctive sonic palette and a distinctly DIY approach.

Their debut project, 'Prototypes', captures the duo finding their feet, moving between club-ready rhythms and more leftfield listening without being tied to either. With a handful of releases and live appearances taking them from Berlin to Waterworks, IceMorph are already building a world that extends beyond the music itself, bringing digital avatars and visual storytelling into the mix.

With 'Prototypes' now out in the world, and dates at South London venue Carpet Shop lined up across October, November and December, about chemistry, avatars, bargain-bin Bandcamp prices (£999, to be exact) and why they let each track end up where it wants to.

Tell us how you formed IceMorph: how did you meet and develop the duo from its beginnings?

CloudCore was born in 2022. On the first Friday in January 2022 the first Benomorph song was birthed from the Core (the baby had a baby!?). And on the first Friday in February 2022 the first Ice Wing song was delivered. Later that month Benomorph and Ice Wing met each other and they became friends.

We were introduced online and didn’t meet in human form until months later, starting out emailing and texting under layers of code names, usernames and pseudonyms. We only learnt each other's passport names once we realised we were on the same musical wavelength.

We spent a long weekend together listening only to fantasi4 by STIN9, and we listened to it lots. It was around 6 months into the lifespan of the label CloudCore and we were really noticing CloudCore had its own 'sound’. Hi-fi, lo-fi, skippy, lethargic - it was wide in scope but narrow in palette and we made some songs that we thought belonged in the world of CloudCore while widening its envelope. The music felt truer to ourselves and also more original than anything we’d been making separately so we decided to focus our efforts and have only glanced back since.

Your production pulls from a lot of different electronic sub-genres but still feels like one cohesive project. How do you two decide what belongs in an IceMorph track and what doesn't?

In music-making mode we’re less locked into a genre than a timbre. We immediately found a concise set of ingredients and tones that felt expressive to us and just ran with them. The bass synths on ETTY, You Make Me Nervous and Barbed Wire were all cooked up with the same recipe. In releases beyond Prototypes you'll probably hear a lot of similarities to the Whip It Up bass. It's a similar story with the drum sounds and vocal processing. With the scope so wide in electronic music it's important to decide on a palette, even if it changes as you evolve.

We also like things to feel a little DIY, we try to only use software and hardware we already own and we own basically no production hardware. We don’t even use the same music writing software so we’ve got used to just making music from whatever we have in front of us. Generally we’ll just use something until we lose interest in the sounds it can make and move onto the next thing. But obviously all of this is coming out of our computers.

Where does the broader inspiration for the project come from? Two Shell feels like a possible touchpoint in places... is that a fair comparison, or are you pulling from somewhere else entirely?

Two Shell is obviously a fair comparison to IceMorph and they definitely sowed some seeds in our garden, but different aspects of IceMorph are seeded from different places. The main focus of IceMorph is writing songs, and their inspiration comes from anywhere. Sometimes you need a track to go between two different styles of music in your DJ sets so you engineer some precisely keyed and tempoed DJ tool to bridge that gap, other times you get home after a night out and one song is still playing in your head and you try to capture the same vibe. Other times you go out and feel deeply upset that in a massive 3-room nightclub it feels like every DJ could be playing from a single playlist so you try to make the opposite to everything you were listening to last night. But our biggest inspiration has been getting to understand each other's tastes.

What's your stylistic direction going forward? Do you have a clear sense of where the sound is heading, or are you just making what feels right in the moment?

Since ‘Prototypes’ came together we’ve had a much clearer idea of what we want to do with IceMorph on the grander scheme. Most of that is about how we share our work with people, through live sets and character animation. Musically we just follow our noses, whatever we make inevitably sounds like us.

We're pretty ahead of our release schedule in terms of finished music, there's some heavier stuff and some softer stuff and some slower stuff and some faster stuff. Being sonically ready early means we can flesh out how to convey the meaning of our songs and sculpt the arc we want our releases to follow. We’re pretty efficient music producers, but not so efficient visual artists so it’s nice to have some time to get the peripheral media in line with where our sound is heading. This feels like a nice time to shout out Bing (bingfinity) who created our digital avatars and who just released a short film called ANCIENT SHARDIAN NONSENSE.

You've packed a lot into a short space of time: a handful of releases, shows in Berlin and at Waterworks... What has that ride been like for you two?

In terms of how we got here, it is easy to assume there’s a linear progression to things, but when you’re down there experiencing it, it's just steps, and some are pretty long and some are pretty high. Each step brings the standard medley of feelings - excited, frightened, happy, sad, anxious, confident, you name it. But that's the same with anything you do.

When you started releasing music on Bandcamp, tracks were priced at 99p and then suddenly appeared at £999. Did anyone buy the music when it was £999?

CloudCore lists old releases at ‘£999 GBP or more’, so you can pay extra if you’re feeling generous.

The tracklist moves between club-ready tracks and solo listening material across the eight tracks. Was that duality intentional from the start, or did it emerge once you started producing the record?

Prototypes mostly consists of the music we were making while defining and learning about what IceMorph is and as a result, the music isn't especially suited to a particular environment. None of the pieces are purpose-built club tracks but aside from B2O we've played all of these songs in club sets. We like listening to Prototypes at home and walking round town and in the studio and on a big soundsystem in the dark. It's quite hard to mix out of Barbed Wire successfully but we like to try. Lucky Number is essentially one big buildup so it can be pretty fun creating a drop by running it out into a percussive hard drum frenzy.

With our more recent stuff we’ve found it’s better to let a track end up at its natural destination than try to shoehorn it into the genre of music we are currently focusing on, or think it should be. We’ve stumbled upon some of our most unique tracks by just enjoying the process and letting the music direct itself. And hey, if we like it but it doesn’t sound like IceMorph we just make a new alias and share it with people anyway - it’s likely someone out there will feel the same way as you.

As audience members, our favourite DJ sets always have some kind of arc or story to them. Merca Bae played a wonderful example of this last year at Ormside Projects, he started off with his 90bpm Reggaeton and Dancehall tracks, ramping up to more techno speeds before performing what could've felt like a hard detour to a Salsa track but instead it felt like an explanation of where the groove in his music had evolved from. He then tied a bow on the set with some jungle inflected bits, which added that London/UK layer on top of his sound. It can feel like a bold move resetting the room if a party's going well but if it's done with the proper intentions it usually pays off. We like to carry that same approach when we're at the controls. Isomorphic - the opening song from Prototypes - and Daysa - a single from the start of 2026 - are fun ways to start a set, they're usually a big drop in tempo from wherever the previous act left us so they give us something to build back up from while setting the tone that it's IceMorph time. The rest of the selections will be informed by what we want to showcase as IceMorph, what we interpret the venue sounds like, and what the audience seem to be engaging with.

You're playing three dates at Carpet Shop in Peckham across October, November and December. What's the connection with the venue? Does South London hold a special place in your hearts?

The blood of Corsica Studios pulses through the heart of the Carpet Shop.

'Prototypes' is out now via Bandcamp.

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