Monty Cime's 2024 began with a bout of homelessness and ended with a feature in Rolling Stone and a two-week tour up the West Coast. A Honduran trans woman based out of southern California, the precarity inexorably influenced her second full-length record, The Cime Interdisciplinary Music Ensemble, most of which was written and arranged in the dorm closet of her bandmate, Sean Hoss, who allowed Monty to stay with her for a semester.

Beginning as a solo project in mid-2021, over the course of three years, Cime would balloon into an "at least" seven-piece collective: a parade of sorts led by Monty's singular, uncompromising vision--a renewal of Latin American folkloric traditions through the integration of contemporary & regional musical languages, namely emo. With Cime's rapid expansion in membership also came its liberalization as a result of Monty's initially trepidatious willingness to accept input from long-time members and collaborators, such as the aforementioned Sean Hoss as well as Rowan Collins, whose early artistic and technical contributions were instrumental in sculpting mid-2023's "Laurels of the End of History," an EP, as well as Frida and the Filibusters Bid Farewell and Fall Asunder, Cime's first live record, released in late 2023, before ultimately culminating in Rowan's most extensive involvement yet seen, with him taking on a role in practically every aspect of the record's creation, including and most notably taking over the role of arranger from Monty entirely and also writing huge portions of songs based off of demos & vague directions for Monty's "vision" for the album, something which they were constantly discussing at Sean's dorm in which Monty also resided, resulting in Cime's recursively self-titled sophomore LP, The Cime Interdisciplinary Music Ensemble, released in August 2024.

Receiving immediate and near-unanimous praise far beyond the local underground of southern California, Cime immediately went on tour with long-time friend Composition Booklet, returning home as a new, up-and-coming band to keep an eye on amidst consistent buzz from international press throughout the last quarter of 2024. And among many other features on year-end lists, their sophomore LP was placed at #1 on Rolling Stone's Staff Picks for Best Music of 2024, according to research editor Rick Carp, on the eve of their first-ever west coast tour.

Going into 2025, Cime is still on the up-and-up, anxious as ever to produce their next record, with their mercurial live performances--now more consistent in quality and quantity than ever before--providing a backdrop for the next stage of the band. For the first time ever, Cime as a band is finally on the same page as to what "Cime" is and what "Cime" can be: thus, the democratic scope of the project continues to expand & morph autonomously. Sean Hoss & riley., who only played minor (but important!) parts in arranging parts for TCIME now take up a much more central and vocal role in the conceptualization of the band's future development (musically and logistically!) than before, aided in no small part by their recent indoctrination into the world of screamo as well as otherwise underground and/or experimental music.

And so the scene is set. The band is tight & everyone has their head in the game. Roles are clearly delineated and communication is rock-solid. The new sound is working & the new songs are being written. Cime walked into 2024 haphazardly, and walked out of 2024 triumphantly. Only time can tell what this newfound confidence will actually yield.