Diamanda Galás reveals new excerpts from forthcoming album, ‘Broken Gargoyles’ + video explaining the album’s genesis and story

Out 26 August on Intravenal Sound Operations is Diamanda Galás’ newest album, “Broken Gargoyles”. Today Galás shares new excerpts from the album as well as a video originally made for the Theatro Circo installation explaining the album’s genesis and story.

The album itself consists of two track, “Mutilatus” and “Abiectio”. The works feature verses by German poet Georg Heym, “Das Fieberspital” and “Die Dämonen der Stadt”. In “Das Fieberspital” Heym describes the horrific state of people suffering from yellow fever who live in paralysing fear of death and swirling delirium owing to their brutal treatment and isolation in medical wards in early 20th century Germany. “Die Dämonen der Stadt” also addresses such grim portents of World War I; in this poem, the god Baal observes (like a gargoyle) a town from a rooftop of a city block at night-time and lets a street burn down during dawn.

Here are some brand new excerpts.

“Broken Gargoyles” was composed in 2020 though the first incarnation of the work was played as a sound installation at the Kapellen Leprosarium (Leper’s Sanctuary) in Hanover, Germany (in keeping with the theme, the sanctuary was built around 1250 and served as a quarantine for those who suffered from the plague and leprosy in the Middle Ages). The work was finalised in collaboration with the artist and sound designer Daniel Neumann.

Talking of their work together he says, “It was a wild working method, all remotely, with all these different pre-existing and newly recorded fragments.” In May, Portugal’s Theatro Circo hosted the sound installation.

Here’s the video made for the Theatro Circo installation explaining the album’s genesis and story.