Some Viscera is the sophomore album of Lakshmi Ramgopal’s multidisciplinary project Lykanthea. Released on December 13, the album forms part of a larger work of dance theater that premiered at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago earlier this year. Presenting a hypnotic blend of ambient balladry, orchestral gestures, and the Carnatic music of Ramgopal’s upbringing, it gives new form to the haunting cycles of her synthy debut Migration (2014). Ramgopal weaves her characteristically raw, emotive vocals and the warmth of the sruti box with the voice of Asha Rowland, strings of Johanna Brock and Erica Miller, and vibraphone of Ben Zucker.
Together, they draw on avian and floral motifs from Indian classical dance, medieval Sanskrit poetry, and the literary movements of India’s independence struggle to create an ecological imaginary that transcends temporal boundaries.
Over four lullabies and brief interludes inspired by South Asian birds, Ramgopal responds to the death of her maternal grandmother, the births of her nieces, and her own ambivalent relationship to motherhood. Simultaneously self-reflexive, Some Viscera considers its own place in a longer trajectory of cultural knowledge and breakdown. Through the historical and personal, Some Viscera takes flight.
For more information on Some Viscera, follow Lykanthea on Instagram, subscribe to Ramgopal’s Substack, and email her here.
