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Cylab
Exclusive for for Girls and Corpses Magazine
©
by Ron Sawyer
all rights reserved
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Cylab is a dark electronic band founded in 1999 by classically trained pianist Percy Trayanov and is fronted by Diva Destruction founding member SeVerina X Sol. They have been described as having a sound that is monstrous, magnificent, terrifying and beautiful. We met up with SeVerina days before she packed up her car with husband Chris (AKA: Cylab band manager), fled LA and headed north to Seattle.
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G&C: I know you guys are in the process of moving to Seattle in a few days so thanks for taking the time out of your busy schedule to do our interview.
S: Absolutely. Thanks for having us.
G&C: Let's start by talking a bit about your new album, "Satellites".
S: "Satellites" was released late February/early March this year, a long awaited, and anticipated album. We're really proud of it. It's a beautiful masterpiece work of art, if I don't mind saying so myself. A lot of thought, time and experience, energy went into the making of it. A very nice blend of very complicated composition on the part of my master bandmate Percy Trayanov who is an excellent skilled musician and myself. We are having an amazing and excellent response from it. People claim that it just gets stuck in their CD players, they just can't get it out and they just have to keep listening.
G&C: I agree. I was listening today in the car.
S: (laughing) Awesome. Thank you.
G&C: It was my pleasure.
S: And it's one of those, you know, through all the works that I've done, it is one of those albums that I myself find something new every time I listen to it. It's got layers. It's kind of like an ogre or an onion. It's getting a great response. When we first put it out there we couldn't keep it in stock on our online store so that was really awesome.
G&C: You guys are pretty diversely situated. I've heard that Percy's living in New York and you're getting ready to move to Seattle.
S: Right
G&C: And you have a guest musician that plays with you as well?
S: Yeah, he's a resident musician, he's our live musician Dre Robinson. We have these verbal contracts or threats or promises or I don't know what they are but hopefully he'll be a writer on the next album as well. Dre's an awesome and amazing writer with the beats and the effects.
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G&C: Is it hard, strategically, to do shows?
S: To get everyone together?
G&C: Yeah, especially since you're moving to Seattle?
S: Luckily, it's not. Percy and I have been friends for almost ten years and we've played together for a few years now so we're at the point where we both know the music well enough and we can read each other well enough that we don't need a lot of practice time. We can pretty much book shows, show up on planes and say, "Hey ho, let's go do a show".
G&C: You must have a lot of frequent flyer miles.
S: Percy does. I always take too many different planes. I'm a little bit on a lot of different planes.
G&C: Cylab does quite a bit of touring. What has the past year been like?
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S: Yeah, it's been a really active year for us for touring, which is wonderful, especially with the new album. And we had the great fortune of getting to tour the East Coast with My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult on their tour this year. We played many cities and got to learn from the forefathers on how to have an awesome tour where you do a show a night in cities hundreds of miles from each other and how to have a lot of fun while doing it. They are such entertainers. We got to learn how to entertain up a crowd.
S: Plus, it was just fun getting to kick it with those guys.
G&C: Yeah, they're pretty legendary. Do they have a new album out, by the way?
S: Yeah, "Gay, Black and married".
G&C: You also had a West Coast tour this year as well, right?
S: Yeah, in May we did a West Coast tour, promoting the new album. We went to our hometown of Seattle and played to an unexpectedly awesome big crowd at the Vogue. And we played San Francisco and we also had a wonderful show here in Los Angeles at Bar Sinister. Those were good times.
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G&C: So it was just those three main cities?
S: Yeah, we just did those three cities. Short, sweet and simple.
G&C: And recently you played at Bat's Day.
S: Yeah, we had great fun doing Bat's Day in Southern California, which is such a unique and fun event and a family event at that. In fact, I got to invite my mother and father and my aunt and my son, family members who have always known that I've done music but have never had the opportunity to see me perform live. So they got to come out and that was wonderful. My parents finally got that the scene wasn't just all about vampires and evil, that it was actually very enjoyable. And I got to share a stage with some great folks like Voltaire, Ayria, Stolen Babies and Regenerator. It was cool. And we have an upcoming show at an event called Xatrian Crux that we're super excited about because it's another very unique show. Apparently, it's going to be a huge show, relatively speaking, for our genre. Looking at like 1,000 people. But it's not just for Cylab, although Cylab will get the wonderful opportunity to be total rock stars on a 50 x 50 foot stage at the Glendale Civic Auditorium and we'll put on a totally amazing show. There are also some other great things going on there. There's gonna be a crew of great DJs and the DJ who actually set this up, 5arah. And there's gonna be other wonderful forms of entertainment going on as well. Tribal Dance members from the piercing suspension group CORE, battle arena tournaments, fortune tellers, visitors of intrigue. It's kind of a LARP convention, live action role-playing, but not limited to. I mean, it goes from sci-fi to D & D, Magic, fairy folk, to Renaissance Faire type stuff. It really varies.
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G&C: Since you've lived in Seattle in the past and you're moving back there in just a few days, can you tell us what the music scene is like there nowadays?
S: Yeah, I lived there 18 years. There's a great music scene and I've always been involved with it since I was old enough to get in clubs, probably even a little younger than that. There are some great clubs up there that many people have heard of, which include the Vogue, which is run by Mike Weimer of the store Musicwerks and ADSR Musicwerks label. And there's a lot of great bands up there. Recently, God Module just moved there and of course our very loved Glis is from there. Anyway, it's gonna be a great move. I, of course, will also be working on my electro band up there XX01, which is kind of like the female version of Combichrist, very sassy, hot club stuff. We'll also be giving it a shot at running a club night, one night a month, and it will be catered to the young ones. If we can even get away with it, maybe even 16 and up. Because I really remember the enthusiasm that, I mean it was really important to me to see a show when I was that age. Now, I'm kind of like, "Yeah, sure", but back then it was like, "Oh, my God!" And we also want to create a club where we could get bands from Sky Cries Mary to Displacer to some little punk outfit to a techno outfit, you know what I mean? Keeping it fun and alternative but not really pigeon-holing it and limiting it one specific genre
G&C: Thanks again, SeVerina, for taking the time to do the interview before you head north to Seattle and good luck with the move. Any last words you'd like to throw out?
S: There are never last words until I'm dead. Thanks for having me and thanks always to our fans and supporters and I look forward to eventually meeting you all one day.
www.cylabonline.com
www.myspace.com/cylabband
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