Over to BBC 6 Music for a session by New York Multi-Media Collective Cumgirl8 (or CG8 in the UK) – recorded and broadcast live on December 10th for New Music Fix.
Marcy Donaldson at AllMusic put this little blurb together to get you acquainted (if you aren’t already):
The spacy, frustrated post-punk of cumgirl8 gives voice to the band’s opposition to contemporary power structures. Balancing angsty, angular indie rock, dance-punk, and eerie, lo-fi atmospheres, the group made their recording debut with an eponymous album in 2020 before signing with 4AD for the phantasea pharm EP in 2023. The label released the group’s second album, the 8th cumming, in 2024.
Based in Manhattan, cumgirl8 was formed by onetime models Lida Fox (vocals, bass) and Veronika Vilim (guitar), along with Avishag Cohen Rodrigues (guitar) and Chase Lombardo (drums). Motivated to use music — as well as fashion, film, publishing, broadcast media, and more — to speak out against oppressive structures like capitalism and the patriarchy, they began performing their anxious and dissonant yet catchy post-punk-inspired songs just a few months before the COVID-19 pandemic silenced venues. While sheltering in place in 2020, the band launched a sociopolitical call-in show on YouTube and released their debut album, cumgirl8, that May on Brooklyn-based label Muddguts Records. The confrontational, four-song EP RIPcumgirl8 was issued by DERO Arcade in conjunction with New Orleans’ Raw Sugar Records in late 2021.
After returning to the road with tours of the U.S., U.K., and Europe, cumgirl8 made the leap to indie major 4AD for the release of the phantasea pharm EP in August 2023. Recorded live in the studio, their entirely analog sophomore long-player, the 8th cumming, followed on the label in October 2024 and was accompanied by another international tour.
And Katie Beswick of Loud and Quiet sez this:
Since at least the 1970s, young, beautiful women have been reclaiming their sexuality and pushing back against patriarchal capitalism through the capitalist patriarchal mediums of commercial popular music and fashion. Cumgirl8, a New York based art collective, are the latest young, beautiful women to do so. Playing with the lines between self-expression and exploitation, the quartet (Lida Fox (bass), Veronika Vilim (guitar), Chase Lombardo (drums) and Avishag Rodrigues (guitar) provoke and connect with their audience using a dizzying mix of sincerity and satire that feels utterly embedded in the meme-generation – much of it, in fact, taking place on Instagram, in the form of literal memes. Engaging with the work leaves you, like any good meme, a little off-balance – not quite sure if you fully get it: a feeling that spills over into our interview. “We met in the metaverse on a sex chat,” Chase, the band’s drummer, who does most of the talking, tells me. “We kind of collided into each other, looking for likeminded friends. But that was like 8,000 years ago… so it’s been a long time coming.”
Press Play – dive in:
