Dissecting DisXYn: Concert Review and Interview (feat. Miami Deathrow)

The rain begins to cascade lightly upon my shoulders as I strut up to Hemisphère Gauche, a Beaubien dive home to all varieties of raucous spectacles. After lunging through the two awkwardly-angled doors, my eyes set upon a trans girl with clear-framed glasses and nicotine breath wearing all-black on door duty; she glances up with a knowing smile. This is Nadia, who, despite drumming for several local bands (among them Puberty Well, Me You Sick, and formerly Sandy Hill House Fire), is performing her first gig since August as her solo rap outfit DisXYn (pronounced "dissection") on this very night. She and I are good friends, and I even did the cover art for her December 2025 debut album, The Colder Months.

 

We chat for a minute before I trek deeper into the bar, past the cramped washroom and glowing slots, to a few other chums who had already arrived. Half of the iconic local metal band Pyrocene Death Cult show up—including CJLO's very own former program director Chris, aka Sewer Spewer—and we give each other sharpied knuckle tattoos. Mine was "face crow."

 

Soon enough, the show starts, and DisXYn takes the stage. The crowd is relatively thin (but then it's a drizzly night and also Madhouse), and most of the audience are good friends of hers anyway. This makes for a lovely, intimate vibe as DisXYn rips through her set with Irairashita DJing. A lot of the tracks are from her aforementioned album (on which Ira does a killer feature), but a few others are older and newer. Some songs are relatively serious and introspective, most are rip-roaringly hilarious, and all are bangers. For one track, Erin Corbett, fresh from a drive from Toronto, comes up and does joint lead vocals. There are a few stage gimmicks ("repeat this line back to me" and stuff), and she closes out with a track from her last EP, a song about Mark Cuban, which she vows to keep playing until it goes viral and he hears it. 

 

After that grand finale, DisXYn steps offstage, and a few minutes later, Creative Sweet get up on it. It seems a significant chunk of the crowd came just for them and were enjoying drinks by the bar during the opening set. Only when they begin playing do I realize that I had forgotten my hearing protection and just knew that the drums were going to do my ears in if I stayed in the pit, so I retreated once more to Nadia's company on doors, who had now donned a blue tee saying something about MILFs. As a result of this decision of mine, I cannot comment on their set except to say that they incorporated the refrain from a 2010s smash hit pop song (though I can't quite recall which), and their crowd looked like they were having a great time. Let's take their word for it.

 

Despite a really cool genre-mashing set making whole universes out of synthetic sounds, I also missed Erin Corbett's performance to protect my precious ears. Instead, I bided my time with Nadia, Irairashita, and some of the bar staff, who were all out front at various times smoking. I used this relaxed post-show period to stage a brief interview with DisXYn herself, the results of which I'll share with you now (with slight editing for conciseness):

 

 

 

CJLO: How long have you been making music of the rap variety?

 

DisXYn: I got my start about four years ago in a rap group, and I've been a rapper since then. I started releasing my music two years ago now, almost to the day even. Yeah, it came out on Bandcamp Friday, April 2024, whatever date that was.

 

C: What effect do you want your music to have on listeners?

 

D: I want dolls to be bent over laughing, and I also want everyone who isn't a doll to think about how their action and/or inaction affects our lives, how their shitty behavior affects people like me and the sisters, the trans women in my life, systematically and even systemically.

 

C: Would you call your music "doll rap"?

 

D: It's tranny rap. A lot of it isn't necessarily about being trans, but a lot of it is very much from the perspective of somebody who is trans, a trans woman specifically.

 

C: What's the ideal setting for listening to your recent album?

 

D: I think you should be feeling a little cold and introspective but also willing to laugh a bit in the face of the sadness and all the things that ail you and take a moment to reflect inwards and feel the lyrics; let them move through you. On my Bandcamp description for the album, I say, "huddle around the trash fire with your other queer found family," so that's also a good setting. The album is called The Colder Months, and I was trying to go for a winter theme without being about holidays: winter as in death and desolation. 

 

C: Ice-olation.

 

D: Exactly.

 

C: [chuckling] Where do you get all your crazy ideas?

 

D: I hear voices in my head. I say this in my music, in fact. I hear the voices; they tell me what to do, and I listen attentively. Very attentively.

 

C: So how'd the gig go?

 

D: The gig went amazingly. Got a good turnout, a lot of people willing to participate in my silly stage gimmicks. I love silly stage gimmicks; they're my favourite thing to do. A lot of friends here, a lot of loved ones in the crowd, people giving me birthday gifts. My birthday is April 15 [this concert/interview was on April 2], but it's April, my month.

 

C: And what's in the future for DisXYn?

 

D: I'm cooking up three albums right now, which all have different approaches to lyrical content and production. 

 

 

 

 

As we conclude the interview, who struts up to the bar but the I-swear-they're-gonna-be-famous-someday duo of Miami Deathrow, decorated in full makeup, leather, and platform heels. In no time at all, they are onstage among their post-apocalyptic stage decor with the entire pit dancing irresistibly. This was my fourth time seeing them, and while they didn't get lathered in blood during this performance, they still handcuffed each other, gyrated in strobe lighting, exorcised the demons of everyone in the room, and made their brand of cooler-than-thou guitar shredding dance music. That Miami Deathrow pulled out all the stops for a half-empty room says a lot about the dedication to their craft. Go see them while you can, before they get huge and move to New York or something.