Swan Meat sounds illegal, right? Well this video from the Cologne-based producer and composer of the same name is so good it probably should be. Taken from her second solo EP TAME (“because I’m not”) which is out now on Kamixlo’s Bala Club label, Swan Meat’s new single LISP is a bizarre cinematic soundscape reminiscent of experimental work by Arca or Iglooghost. “While producing the track LISP I didn’t have any overarching narrative in mind,” Swan Meat explains. “I was just trying to see how far I could reasonably take these bits of vocaloid lyric and make all these sections coalesce into one fluid track.” Coalesce it does — the vocal embraced by elements of fantasy gaming scores, shuddering basslines and something altogether more baroque, all coexisting beautifully.
LISP has been blessed with the dystopian animated visual we’re treating you to today. Created by Rick Farin with 3D photoscan by Paragon Serath, Swan Meat explains: “It was directly inspired by depictions of infection and disease in early PS1 survival horror games like Resident Evil. Though the video’s biggest inspiration was the opening scene in Parasite Eve, in which an opera singer mutates into a horrifying yet beautiful monster mid-libretto.” Of course. The video engages with such a transformation, she says, “considering infection as fashion, accoutrement, or even better — mitochondrial body armour.”
It’s all quite Annihilation, what with the face-hugging plantlife and bodies warping to the music, growing even more disturbing, even more sludgy nightmare as things progress. Watch it below and enjoy the following poem, written by Swan Meat to accompany the project:
wove a quorum of wasps + tarantula lanugo into
my pollyanna braids + pores
ate the split ends and oh so sweet oh so feathred
and wings like fungi burst
out my lungs & flaked rapidly as cotton candy
& once again my heart beat with a lisp