For the last few months, I’ve been collaborating on a gratifyingly unsummarizable musical project called Demsyl. The team-up began as the brainchild of Stephanie LaCava, whose new novel Nymph (⇋⇋BUY⇌⇌) features--alongside the author’s reliably complicated entanglements with lineage and outsiderdom, and her characteristic free play of genre and autofiction--lots and lots of black metal stuff. Stood to reason, then, that when the book came out, there should probably be a band too.
“Demsyl” (a misspelled rendering of the name of a cough syrup, in the classically mangled tradition) was the result. The project came to feature a straight-up murderers’ row of performers including myself, Max Lawton, Laszlo Horvath, and Jack Callahan, and played for the first time last night as part of Artists Space’s Abasement series. I’m pre-writing this post, but for argument’s sake let’s just say the set went amazing.
Next up will be a video performance at the London launch of Nymph, this Wednesday at the ICA. An audiovisual preview is attached below, featuring a Demsylian interpolation of one of the best songs ever. Like I said: unsummarizable--though I guess Stephanie does give a little more info in this Frieze interview. Me, though? From here, I’m staying quiet.
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