DJ and performer Myst Milano brings ‘Shapeshyfter’ debut album to life at Lavender Creek cabaret

The Lavender Creek Story Cabaret is landing at the Baby G Thursday night.

Part of Luminato’s year-round Creative Current series, the event will feature an intriguing setup: four artists who will perform 30-minute sets, followed by in-depth interviews accompanied by visuals and an ASL interpreter.

And those featured artists represent cutting edge work: there’s the electropop synth tapestries of Ojibwe native Johnny “Wolf” Saga; Halluci Nation’s Bear Witness, whose video artistry will be on full display for his evening segment and first generation Egyptian-Canadian comedian Salma Hindy, a graduate of Second City’s standup comedy program.

Rounding out the lineup is a hip-hop visionary and DJ who has been rattling cages and making noise with their debut album “Shapeshyfter”: Myst Milano, originally from Edmonton and a resident of Toronto for the past six years, says they have something special up their sleeve for their time allotment at the Lavender Creek Story Cabaret.

“As far as the show goes, I’ve been working on choreography with Danah Rosales, a.k.a. Mother Maidita Siriano, of my Kiki House in the Ballroom scene, for the last month or so,” Milano, who is queer and non-binary, revealed over the phone recently. “We’ve just been working on a more cohesive live show, so there’s gonna be a lot of high energy dance and a lot of fun.”

For those unfamiliar with Toronto’s Kiki Ballroom scene, it’s a safe space and competitive pageantry community for LGBTQ individuals that gathers them into assembled families and provides them with the love and support they might not receive from their original kin, usually due to their orientation.

Milano’s “Shapeshyfter” is the first fully realized vision of their work since they took up the drums at the age of 11 and later switched to DJing, although Milano says training as a musician is what fuelled the album.

“I actually started as a musician before I became a DJ,” says Milano. “People here have known me as a DJ for longer, just cause it’s easier to get DJ gigs, but I started playing the drums for about five years and then I started rapping when I was 16. Two years after that, I started DJing so the transition has been pretty natural. I just enjoy playing music for people, whether it’s my own or other people’s.

“I love genre bending and pulling from all my different influences. I have a really eclectic taste in music, so I like to to play really high energy sets that get people moving, but that draw from a pretty diverse background interests.”

Milano’s interest in recording and production piqued when they acquired Abelton production and performance software, recording the album’s lead track “No Shade,” a danceable self-declaration of confidence (“Baby/ It’s no shade/But when you’re top grade/ Sometimes you can’t stay for dessert”) and intent that seems to be a direct contrast to the topics of “dissatisfaction, disillusionment, discomfort, feeling disconnected, feeling uncomfortable, feeling like you’re looking through things and things are fake” that dominate the remainder of the 11-song album.

But as Milano states, that’s “shapeshyfting.”

“It’s a mixture of all those things,” they admit. “I think there are confessional aspects to part of the album, but the way I wanted to do it — because it’s my first full length and my first album on a label really — I wanted to kind of state who I am as an artist and who I am as a person.”

One particularly memorable number is “Oh, Boy,” an electronic reverie of a response to the 2020 George Floyd murder that polarized North America, and one which Milano maintains has been their most difficult song to write — especially from the viewpoint of a conflict journalist, as they were reporting via Instagram about on-the-ground protests to the killing for Club Quarantine, a Zoom platform created during the lockdown stages of the pandemic.

“It took me a long time to get through writing it and it’s a really difficult topic, especially as a Black person,” Milano admits.” I was doing conflict journalism work at the time, but there’s still such a feeling of helplessness when you do that kind of work, because there’s only so much you can do as one person. So, it was me kind of coming to terms with some hopelessness that I was feeling and some trying to put it into perspective and, and be honest with myself about what I was going through.”

Then there’s the self-described “introverted and more contemplative” “All Filler,” which Milano plans to perform Thursday, a short piece driven by an ostinato synth-base line.

“It’s a spoken word song that was inspired by Slint and Godspeed You! Black Emperor that is kind of an exploration into my mind,” they explain. “It’s about how living in a bigger city kind of takes away people’s genuineness and skews the reality. I don’t think people connect in a bigger city, for they have ulterior motives. That’s what that song’s about: people having ulterior motives, me feeling uncomfortable with that, seeing it in action and not liking it.”

Milano, who is about to go on a minitour of Belgium and Berlin before embarking on more Canadian dates, says they are constantly creating whether it’s music or some other form of expression, the majority of it springing from the written word.

“I’m content writing in one way or another,” says Milano. “Sometimes, it’ll just be a line will pop into my head and then I’ll write it down. Sometimes I come back three months later, look at a line and then suddenly a song just kind of flows out.

“But I’m really inspired by other rappers and by rock music, especially in my lyrics, in my kind of writing style and a lot of my metaphors. It’s more rock than rap a lot of the time — and I’m inspired by my surroundings too, as well as the people that I spend my time with and the things that I do in my spare time.”

They admit that melody isn’t their strong suit.

“I’ve been writing for so long that it’s just kind of second nature and it’s more of a game to me than it is a challenge. I really love writing lyrics and putting the puzzle together. It’s very satisfying for me.”

And as they reference in “No Shade,” Myst Milano has lofty ambitions.

“I’d love to go on a real world tour and play everywhere and just kind of do like a much bigger stage show with backup dancers and call costume changes and lights and projections and all of that,” they declare. “And I’d love to just continue growing as an artist and become a better producer and a better writer. I want to be the Canadian Andre 3000.”

For more information on Lavender Creek Story Cabaret, visit luminatofestival.com.