Black Meteoric Star / Wet / Ransom Note – By John Matthews

Magical musical musings from the mind of the marvellous John Matthews. Gavilán Rayna Russom is an artist, folklorist and curator based in New York City who has been making electronic music for over thirty years. In her early twenties she became an electronics engineer and by the start of the 2000s was busy building, tweaking, and fixing custom synthesisers for DFA Records and LCD Soundsystem – she actually joined James Murphy’s band full-time from 2009 to 2018. My introduction to her music came in 2005 when she teamed up with Delia Gonzalez, a Cuban-American interdisciplinary artist. Their collaborative DFA album, “The Days of Mars”, which draws from ambient and krautrock influences, is a true masterpiece and prompted me to closely follow her intriguing solo career which has spanned numerous aliases. Black Meteoric Star is one of those monikers, acting as a vehicle for Rayna to release raw acid, electro and techno, all heavily rooted in the subculture of queer underground clubbing.…