30th November // Death Disco
cumgirl8 met in a sex chat 8000 years ago in another metaverse. Made up of Lida Fox (bass), Veronika Vilim (guitar), Chase Lombardo (drums), and Avishag Rodrigues (guitar), the band started as an art collective in 2019 before coming together to create a boundary-less sound, drawing from the likes of ESG, Cocteau Twins, Suicide, CSS, B-52s, The Shangri-Las, Chris & Cosey, Madonna, and many more.
As reflected in their name, cumgirl8’s work pushes against the status quo by satirizing themes in popular culture surrounding femme objectification, social media sensationalism, and capitalism. They create a universe within their art that stretches into the tangible, the four-piece creating a fashion line (cg8) with runway shows that have received multiple praises from Vogue Magazine. They also paired their first music release with a graphic zine, illustrated by Air Hoover. It narrates the genesis of the band as a group of post-human superheroes that exist inside the internet and transform the power of orgasms into enlightenment. During quarantine, the band continued spreading their ideals by launching a lo-fi internet talk show ‘The 1-900’ interviewing artists like Junglepussy, Dani Miller, US congressional candidate Paperboy Love Prince, the hosts of Girls on Porn podcast, among others. Their main medium though is music. The quartet’s commitment to constantly evolving their sound has so far resulted in two EP’s: cumgirl8 (2020), RIPcumgirl8 (2021) and last year’s standalone single “dumb bitch.”
The band’s new EP and 4AD debut phantasea pharm captures the warm and classic sounds of their predecessors, with the entire project recorded, mixed, and mastered to analog tape. Inspired by an obsession with Ella Fitzgerald’s “Old McDonald,” ahead of a show in Charlottesville, Virginia, the band decided to pay homage. Vilim dressed up in a cow leotard with pig accessories, Lombardo in a g-string and apron that read “The Grillfather,” Rodrigues became a lawn mower on the grass through a hodge-podge of green pieces, and Fox took on the role of a sexy chicken. “We went on stage that night and told everyone we were a ‘Fantasy Farm.’” They knew then that would become the basis of their new EP.
Across the six tracks that make up phantasea pharm, the band is as raw and daring as ever ,perfectly encapsulated in the EP’s first single “cicciolina” named after famed Hungarian-Italian porn-star turned politician Ilona Staller, aka Cicciolina.
As much as the music itself, cumgirl8’s incendiary live performances are brilliantly chaotic and emblematic of the spirit of New York performance art. Self-styled with clothes they often make themselves – from the aforementioned farm animals to giant babies – their onstage aesthetics have also found favor in the fashion world, resulting in various features and cover stories from the likes of Lampoon and Purple Magazine.
Links:
Website – www.cumgirl8epk.com/
Instagram – www.instagram.com/cumgirl8/
Youtube – www.youtube.com/channel/UC7YXnj8_1rNkhbi6MY9aHlg
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