Gavilán Rayna Russom + related

Black Meteoric Star - Disco 3xLP
Black Meteoric Star - Disco 3xLP
Black Meteoric Star - Disco 3xLP
Black Meteoric Star - Disco 3xLP
Black Meteoric Star - Disco 3xLP

Black Meteoric Star - Disco 3xLP

$40.00

DFA is thrilled to now offer releases from Voluminous Arts, the new label from Gavilán Rayna Russom, in our online store. Rayna has released a ton of music on DFA under aliases like Gavin Russom, Delia and Gavin, Black Meteoric Star and The Crystal Ark, and she's also been a member of LCD Soundsystem. She's since released music on a bunch of other labels (all of it very good!) and started Voluminous Arts in 2017.
Disco, the four Black Meteoric Star full-length, has been burning a hole in our turntable since we bought it.

Learn more about Voluminous Arts here.

Official blurb below...

Triple, multi-colored LP (LP1 is orange, LP2 is mint and LP3 is plum) with xeroxed cover. Digital download codes to be provided after purchase.

**

Voluminous Arts happily announces its third official release, a 12 track digital album and accompanying 3xLP limited 3 color vinyl edition entitled Disco by Gavilán Rayna Russom’s elusive alias Black Meteoric Star. This is not a Disco record. The title deliberately troubles the music biz’s incessant tendency to hierarchize genre classification over the experience of listening. If you must categorize these mutant sounds think of them as a proposed alternate score for those long, caffeinated sessions in Abby Sciuto’s forensics lab, the soundtrack to a heavy workout in the Westchester Danger Room or perhaps the musical accompaniment to deep body investigations of your own ancestral memories.

What this record really is, and why it’s called Disco has to do with the layering of time and life energy present in the spaces where we have traditionally danced to music which are sometimes called Discos. From the pounding urgency of “Muscle Machine” through the unbridled night vision romp that is “Fluid Feline Forms” and the shimmering investigations of “Whispers Between Worlds” to the extended lazer pointer focus of “I’m Unmelting” this record lays out a broad slab of practice-based research into the ghosts we connect with on the dance floor. Whether it be through partying in former industrial buildings, contested spaces of labor built on lands violently appropriated from indigenous people, uncomfortably inhabiting vacuums in queerness left by the AIDS epidemic, lifting lineages through sampling, or the relentless cycle of whitening that accompanies dance music’s march into the market, our experiences in the Disco have been permeated by the spectral and the haunted. Through rhythm and frequency, organized over time, this music blurs the veil between the living and the dead inviting those who move to it to connect with experiences beyond that false binary.

What you have here is another fantastic Black Meteoric Star record, as always made without multitracking or overdubbing, recorded directly from single live takes. It is is utterly consistent with all that name has come to mean, but on Disco Black Meteoric Star’s vision has been allowed to expand into an almost mythologically epic space. Ancestral time works differently. Settle in and absorb the frequencies. As the closing track suggests, the virtual Disco these sounds evoke is for “Freaks Only”.

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Black Meteoric Star - Black Meteoric Star
Black Meteoric Star - Black Meteoric Star

Black Meteoric Star - Black Meteoric Star

$5.00

Black Meteoric Star was written, recorded and produced by Gavin Russom between September of 2006 and December of 2008.

This CD contains the entire 12" series.


Excluding "Dawn" the tracks have been edited for album length.


The original digital transfers of tracks 1-4 were done in Berlin.


This recording was achieved using specialized electronic circuits designed and built by Gavin Russom.

Tracklist:
1) Death Tunnel
2) World Eater
3) Domination
4) Anthem
5) Dream Catcher
6) Dawn

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Black Meteoric Star 3x12" Bundle
Black Meteoric Star 3x12" Bundle

Black Meteoric Star 3x12" Bundle

$35.00

Originally conceived as a series of 3x12" singles, the first blast of Black Meteoric Star tracks ended up coming together on a self-titled "album" in 2009. It being 2009 and all, the collection only came out digitally and on CD (?). It never got a proper vinyl release.

So, this is the next best thing: all three original BMS twelves, purchasable as a unit, at a special bundled price.

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Black Meteoric Star - 3 Love Songs EP
Black Meteoric Star - 3 Love Songs EP
Black Meteoric Star - 3 Love Songs EP
Black Meteoric Star - 3 Love Songs EP
Black Meteoric Star - 3 Love Songs EP

Black Meteoric Star - 3 Love Songs EP

$13.00

DFA is thrilled to now offer releases from Voluminous Arts, the new label from Gavilán Rayna Russom, in our online store. Rayna has released a ton of music on DFA under aliases like Gavin Russom, Delia and Gavin, Black Meteoric Star and The Crystal Ark, and she's also been a member of LCD Soundsystem. She's since released music on a bunch of other labels (all of it very good!) and started Voluminous Arts in 2017.

Learn more about Voluminous Arts here.

Official blurb on this one from Rayna herself below...

Pink vinyl with a xeroxed cover. Digital download codes to be provided after purchase.

**

"The 3 Love Songs EP comes out of a live show I did at a house party. I grew up and came of age playing shows in people's houses but hadn't done it in a while. My good friends L'Amour Bleu, a New York based band I'm a big fan of asked me to play with them at their record release party. It would have been impossible to bring my normal equipment and perform my normal Black Meteoric Star set so I decided to create something stripped down and simple that would require a minimal amount of gear. Black Meteoric Star live shows often include vocal elements that don't appear on the record, but some of those elements began to creep into more recent recordings such as "No Map" on The Xecond Xoming of Black Meteoric Star and the two poems I read on the No More White Presidents Soundtrack. This stripped down and more "punk" incarnation gave me an opportunity to formalize and expand on these vocal elements. I was just beginning to truly awaken to and accept my trans feminine identity and grasped onto the idea of a love song that, defying convention, spoke about my relationship with my inner world and the elemental forces around me rather than a cherished "other", imagined or real. After performing at the event I felt the "songs' were strong enough to record and the result was this EP. As with all Black Meteoric Star music these are live takes to cassette tape with no multitracking or editing." 

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The Crystal Ark - The Crystal Ark
The Crystal Ark - The Crystal Ark

The Crystal Ark - The Crystal Ark

$22.98

The debut LP by The Crystal Ark.

The limited edition 2xLP comes in a silk screened sleeve printed inside & out and is an edition of 400 total.

The Crystal Ark is the child of Gavin Rayna Russom and Viva Ruiz, and features contributions from LCD Soundsystem members Matt Thornley and Tyler Pope, among a cast of other DFA-related musicians like Alberto Lopez and Jaiko Suzuki. 

Track List: 

  1. Ascension
  2. We Came To
  3. Morir Soñando
  4. Crossing
  5. Paradise
  6. Rhodes
  7. Rain
  8. Silver Cord
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Black Meteoric Star - Dreamcatcher b/w Dawn 12"
Black Meteoric Star - Dreamcatcher b/w Dawn 12"
Black Meteoric Star - Dreamcatcher b/w Dawn 12"
White Label

Black Meteoric Star - Dreamcatcher b/w Dawn 12"

$9.98

Black Meteoric Star is the latest project by longtime DFA alumni Gavin Russom. The project is inspired equal parts Euro-disco, wonky early electronic body music from America's Midwest and an always present fascination with the outer reaches of global psychedelic rock. Gavin Russom began the recordings for Black Meteoric Star sometime in 2006. It was at this time that Carl Craig remixed Delia Gonzalez & Gavin Russom's single "Relevee", making it one of the years biggest dance club anthems. Three vinyl 12" singles by Black Meteoric Star will be released on DFA Records with extended original versions in 2009 along with a full self-titled CD that edits and compiles all six singles. There will be an edition of 100 of each 12" hand stamped and accompanied by a series of posters also designed by Russom. These releases will follow a narrative line and the six pieces of music tell a story of clubbing and the long journey through the night and into the next day.

In this project, Russom carries his ability to create rich sonic landscapes to the dance floor using minimal but intense arrangements and high-energy repetition. The third and final chapter is "Dream Catcher / Dawn". In "Dream Catcher" it becomes clear that neither the masculine nor the feminine side can win. They have to coexist, and can, when each side acknowledges its own strengths and resolves to use them toward a mutual end. In terms of the club land metaphor this is the point in the night where people hook up. As the longest of the six tracks its story is about total surrender. For me it evokes both lovers surrendering to each other and the devotee surrendering to his God. At this moment we acknowledge that there is no way out but through. "Dawn" comes. The bass line echoes the melody of "Death Tunnel", signaling return. Although we are beginning again everything looks, sounds and feels different. We are much stronger now. As the sun comes up and edges begin to become clear again, we drive slowly through the still sleeping city. Rhode Island native Gavin Russom now lives and works in Berlin. He has produced many remixes recently, including a new single by Croatian techno artist Petar Dundov, New York's avant garde duo Palms and a remix featured on the upcoming soundtrack for the remake of the movie Tron.

Tracklist

A - Dreamcatcher

B - Dawn

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Delia Gonzalez & Gavin Russom - Track 5 12"
Delia Gonzalez & Gavin Russom - Track 5 12"

Delia Gonzalez & Gavin Russom - Track 5 12"

$14.98

The lost "5th Track" from the Delia & Gavin "Days of Mars" album sessions.

Comes in a beautiful picture sleeve and features a remix by Ame.

**PLEASE NOTE all remaining stock of this title is slightly worn / imperfect. The cost has been adjusted to reflect this. 

Tracklisting:

  1. Track 5 (10:03)
  2. Track 5 (Âme Remix) (10:07)
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Delia Gonzalez & Gavin Russom - The Days of Mars 2xLP
Delia Gonzalez & Gavin Russom - The Days of Mars 2xLP

Delia Gonzalez & Gavin Russom - The Days of Mars 2xLP

$32.98

Some old copies of what is arguably the crown jewel of the early DFA catalog have been "unearthed!"

These copies are even pressed at 45RPM!

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Gavilán Rayna Russom - Trans-Verberation Cassette
Gavilán Rayna Russom - Trans-Verberation Cassette
Gavilán Rayna Russom - Trans-Verberation Cassette
Gavilán Rayna Russom - Trans-Verberation Cassette

Gavilán Rayna Russom - Trans-Verberation Cassette

$10.00

DFA is thrilled to now offer releases from Voluminous Arts, the new label from Gavilán Rayna Russom, in our online store. Rayna has released a ton of music on DFA under aliases like Gavin Russom, Delia and Gavin, Black Meteoric Star and The Crystal Ark, and she's also been a member of LCD Soundsystem. She's since released music on a bunch of other labels (all of it very good!) and started Voluminous Arts in 2017.

Learn more about Voluminous Arts here.

Official blurb below...

Digital download codes to be provided after purchase.

**

Long ago, in the days before Rayna quit drinking, one of her favorite cocktails was something of her own invention called a “Saint Teresa”; iced chamomile tea and gin, usually Crystal Palace brand. To call it a cocktail is ridiculous, considering her technique was to mix it in an old orange juice bottle and carry that around all night. Something about the botanicals used in distilling the gin and mixing the chamomile leaves and flowers produced a mildly psychedelic effect before the inevitable blackout. The drink’s name came from the fascination-bordering-on-obsession Rayna developed for the story and writings of Saint Teresa of Ávila. She sought these out after being shown Bernini’s sculptural rendering of St Teresa’s experience of being penetrated by the Holy Spirit in an art history class in the early 90’s. She often spent most of that class sitting next to her girlfriend so they could fondle each other in the darkened lecture hall; the mix of religious ecstasy, sexuality and attention to detail in the sculpture lodged deeply in her consciousness. As a deeply spiritual and often extremely solitary and private person, her love of the story that animated Bernini’s hand has continued to grow throughout her life, especially after multiple visits in the late 90’s and early 2000’s to the chapel of Santa Maria de la Vittoria in Rome where the sculpture is currently kept. Transverberation sees her returning to that story as a sober woman in her mid 40’s, initiated into several spiritual traditions that specifically work with the energy of saints. The 9 works that comprise this release are also informed by her experiences of quarantine and social distancing. In an environment of enforced solitude and ramping collective horniness, the idea and practice of sexual intimacy with god became deep, complex and necessary.

As a sober person with much experience of the psychedelic, Rayna’s connection with and development of spirituality as an expansive, living energy has been vital. The idea that intimacy with god could have a sexual dimension, or could even be contextualized by sexuality has been an important component of this connection and development, one that sets the experiences of the divine she sonically describes on Transverberation very far from the staunch conservatism of Chistinaity in its colonial forms. Rayna’s spirituality affirms the body and all of its desires and fantasies, and it was for this reason that St Teresa’s writing, and the fantastical and erotic webs it weaves spoke to her and continues to be a reference point. When she no longer had the ecstatic effects of drugs and alcohol to draw on for a sense of connectedness, she found that her body’s demands for connection through channels of sexuality increased, and that a simplistic understanding of sexuality was no longer sustainable. In the isolation of quarantine, this imperative to shift sexuality from the rigid and compartmentalized definitions that its commodification in our shame based culture has created to an expansive method of connection with the creative energies of the universe increased.

It became a method of survival and sustainability. While this connection sometimes took the form of engagement with other individuals and their bodies or with the images and descriptions of them as transmitted via text messages, voice notes, pictures or webcam feeds, its anchor was in the connection to a sustainability affirming divine source. Engagement with another individual, although welcomed, was not necessary to experience connection with this source. It was simply one manifestation of it. At the center, anchoring her during this time, which continues to unfold, was the knowing that her creator could be as near to her as she was willing to have that energy be, and that included both its admission into her body and the opening of that energy force to her body’s deepest sexual desires.

Transverberation describes an embodied and self-determined spirituality, one that embraces and entwines with rich and creative sexualities rather than compartmentalizing them. This avenue of spiritual experience connects with the lives of the Saints, especially St. Teresa, not through the gateway guarded by the church but directly through the vinculum of the ecstatic. Its sonically immersive descriptions map a spirituality that reclaims ritual and resides within the sexual as a communion with divine creative forces and their residues that manifest in nature, resistance and the spirit world. As both a digital album with tracks separated and discreet, or as a cassette tape where they blend together into a contiguous landscape on each side, the album unfolds itself like a rosary, reminiscent of St Teresa’s concept of the interior castle in which deepening experiences of prayer lead one through a complex of mansions where increasingly profound modes of connection become possible. Sounds, more spun than woven, evoke echoing hallways, intimate breaths, silent faces and disembodied voices. In ringing tones one hears and feels not only the reverberant bell but the wand that strikes it and the grip of the hand that holds the wand. There are moments of wailing, mourning, screaming, bleeding, cumming, dying and birthing. This passionate energy, although it celebrates the fluidity of sexuality, does not pursue transgression as much as it proposes that the strictures that religion, in collusion with capital and the state, put on sexuality are themselves transgressions against the body. Through sound, composed in time, Transverberation constructs another type of interior architecture, one in which the supervision and punitive prudishness of colonialism are absent, and an unconditionally loving, gorgeous, horny and perverse divine power is palpably present.

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Black Meteoric Star - No More White Presidents Soundtrack Cassette
Black Meteoric Star - No More White Presidents Soundtrack Cassette
Black Meteoric Star - No More White Presidents Soundtrack Cassette
Black Meteoric Star - No More White Presidents Soundtrack Cassette

Black Meteoric Star - No More White Presidents Soundtrack Cassette

$10.00

DFA is thrilled to now offer releases from Voluminous Arts, the new label from Gavilán Rayna Russom, in our online store. Rayna has released a ton of music on DFA under aliases like Gavin Russom, Delia and Gavin, Black Meteoric Star and The Crystal Ark, and she's also been a member of LCD Soundsystem. She's since released music on a bunch of other labels (all of it very good!) and started Voluminous Arts in 2017.

Learn more about Voluminous Arts here.

Official blurb below...

Digital download codes to be provided after purchase.

**

Black Meteoric Star's original soundtrack for the film "No More White Presidents" unofficial cat# VOL001, the first release on Voluminous Arts. Sprawling across each 30-minute side of this cassette are tape saturated and distorted sounds from the depths of BMS’s well. Distinctions between “track” and “interlude” are blurred. Poetry emerges from surging lagoons of synthesizer sound and beats push forth from noise. 

No More White Presidents is a multi-layered abstract film by Gavilán Rayna Russom. She began the film in 2015 and after working on it gradually over two years completed it in January of 2017. It is the first formal occurrence of the “flash film” technique that now forms the central structural device of her filmmaking practice. This technique has connections to both compositional techniques such as serialism and chance operations and craft technologies such as beading, braiding and weaving. The film engages the failures of capitalism via an extended meditation on the different forms of unreconciled dead its fallout has accumulated. 

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The Crystal Ark - The Tangible Presence Of The Miraculous 12"
The Crystal Ark - The Tangible Presence Of The Miraculous 12"

The Crystal Ark - The Tangible Presence Of The Miraculous 12"

$14.98

12" featuring the original and instrumental version.

Track List: 

  1. The Tangible Presence of the Miraculous (13:45)
  2. The Tangible Presence of the Miraculous (Instrumental) (13:45)
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The Crystal Ark - The City Never Sleeps 12"
The Crystal Ark - The City Never Sleeps 12"

The Crystal Ark - The City Never Sleeps 12"

$14.98

The debut 12" from The Crystal Ark

Features the original and extended instrumental.

Track List: 

  1. The City Never Sleeps (5:00)
  2. The City Never Sleeps (Instrumental) (12:21)
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Black Meteoric Star - Death Tunnel b/w World Eater 12"
Black Meteoric Star - Death Tunnel b/w World Eater 12"

Black Meteoric Star - Death Tunnel b/w World Eater 12"

$14.98

Black Meteoric Star is the latest project by longtime DFA alumni Gavin Russom. The project is inspired equal parts Euro-disco, wonky early electronic body music from America's Midwest and an always present fascination with the outer reaches of global psychedelic rock. Gavin Russom began the recordings for Black Meteoric Star sometime in 2006. It was at this time that Carl Craig remixed Delia Gonzalez & Gavin Russom's single "Relevee", making it one of the years biggest dance club anthems. Three vinyl 12" singles by Black Meteoric Star will be released on DFA Records with extended original versions in 2009 along with a full self-titled CD that edits and compiles all six singles. There will be an edition of 100 of each 12" hand stamped and accompanied by a series of posters also designed by Russom. These releases will follow a narrative line and the six pieces of music tell a story of clubbing and the long journey through the night and into the next day. In this project, Russom carries his ability to create rich sonic landscapes to the dance floor using minimal but intense arrangements and high-energy repetition. 

The first single "Death Tunnel" / "World Eater" tells the story of the personal entry into darkness. In "Death Tunnel" the rhythmic lines lose their edges as they repeat in a tense nature. We are driving forward fast and this somehow creates a particular kind of ecstasy. As in twilight, borders become unclear and the boundary between inner and outer becomes soft. Sounds like electronic waves connects the experience to the ocean, another vast, unknowable place of transformation. "World Eater" was created under circumstances such that even Gavin has no idea how many of the sounds were created. It has been said to suggest a panther prowling through the jungle, looking for prey. Considering the above, that seems appropriate enough. Rhode Island native Gavin Russom now lives and works in Berlin. He has produced many remixes recently, including a new single by Croatian techno artist Petar Dundov, New York's avant garde duo Palms and a remix featured on the upcoming soundtrack for the remake of the movie Tron.
Tracklist
A - Death Tunnel
B - World Eater
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Black Meteoric Star - Dominatron b/w Anthem 12"
Black Meteoric Star - Dominatron b/w Anthem 12"

Black Meteoric Star - Dominatron b/w Anthem 12"

$14.98

Black Meteoric Star is the latest project by longtime DFA alumni Gavin Russom. The project is inspired equal parts Euro-disco, wonky early electronic body music from America's Midwest and an always present fascination with the outer reaches of global psychedelic rock. Gavin Russom began the recordings for Black Meteoric Star sometime in 2006. It was at this time that Carl Craig remixed Delia Gonzalez & Gavin Russom's single "Relevee", making it one of the years biggest dance club anthems. Three vinyl 12" singles by Black Meteoric Star will be released on DFA Records with extended original versions in 2009 along with a full self-titled CD that edits and compiles all six singles. There will be an edition of 100 of each 12" hand stamped and accompanied by a series of posters also designed by Russom. These releases will follow a narrative line and the six pieces of music tell a story of clubbing and the long journey through the night and into the next day. In this project, Russom carries his ability to create rich sonic landscapes to the dance floor using minimal but intense arrangements and high-energy repetition. 

The second single "Dominatron / Anthem" takes place after midnight. The animal energy encountered in "World Eater" is released and splits itself into female and male parts. This 12" is the story of their struggle for power over one another. "Dominatron" is the feminine side and "Anthem" is the masculine side. As in a possession ritual, each side appears and does its dance. Rhode Island native Gavin Russom now lives and works in Berlin. He has produced many remixes recently, including a new single by Croatian techno artist Petar Dundov, New York's avant garde duo Palms and a remix featured on the upcoming soundtrack for the remake of the movie Tron.

Tracklist

A - Dominatron

B - Anthem

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