Dalila Kayros is a vocal researcher with a taste for extreme experimentation, combining bits of jazz, industrial, and borderline nightmarish studio tricks to produce visceral, emotive, and occasionally shocking results.
One could argue that sonically, Dalila’s solo output lands somewhere between the distorted wails of Lingua Ignota and the haunting, stripped back delivery of Chelsea Wolfe, but as you’re about to see, there’s more than just meets the eye.
We’re very stoked indeed to premier the video for “Seed,” the latest Dalila Kayros single from her most recent album, Animàmi. Check it out below.
If you’re prone to nightmares, maybe you can just play it and… look at the keyboard or something. There are some facial animations in there that are straight out of that scene in Peewee’s Big Adventure when Large Marge’s face bugs out. It is pretty cool, though.
Animàmi gets much of it’s additional texture and flavor from Danilo Casti – according to Kayros, “Our research in music is dynamic, it’s like discovering new world dimensions through sounds and we think this is amazing. Thus, there is a deep and straight connection between the concepts and the composition of the whole album.”
The conceptual background of the album is fascinating to say the least, with magical incantations and intention setting taking the literal focal point, both in production and delivery. “Seed” doesn’t make it too obvious, other than repeated lines of ‘I drink my blood…’ but to clarify, check out this additional quote from Dalila Kayros taken from the Animàmi press release:
“I think through my new LP I found a way to read the symbols of the deep inner self. It’s reaching the Dragon inside the cave, the great Animàmi where all the shadows are merged in there. I’m just feeling myself a bit more aware of how light can be spread through the darkness… there’s no light without darkness, there’s no darkness without light. What helped me reach the balance between darkness and light was putting everything in music. The only way to reach harmony with yourself is to feel your darkness entirely, to know it, embrace it, named it and let it be part of you. I broke the cosmic egg. Now I feel both sun and the moon doing magic together. But the inner transmutation is an endless process, never you’ll reach the perfect crystal, everything is always in progress… Animàmi is how I named the shadows hidden in mind, entities living in the unconscious and forming a chaotic matter melted with thought and emotions. They are vanishing but visible and capable of appearing in multiple shapes.”
The intersection of all of these things is just so fascinating. You have spirituality, vocal experimentation, otherworldly production, and more creating this raw, primal result that feels like more than just music. It feels like a language of expression, like a medium of its own. Perhaps not everyone will hold the same beliefs as Dalila Kayros, but the evidence of her abilities, both musical and magical, is beyond question, and we’re definitely looking forward to hearing whatever comes next.
Also, somehow we got to the end of the article without mentioning that Dalila is in an experimental hardcore group called SYK, currently signed to House Core / Nuclear Blast. Definitely check them out as well if you haven’t here. Of course, you should also check out the rest of Animàmi here on Bandcamp, and if you’re feeling Christmas-y, buy us a steaming hot spiked cocoa here. Coming up we’ve got Ahleuchatistas, Hey! Tonal, and of course, the year end list. Thanks for reading!