Gavilán Rayna Russom - Kemmer (w/ Cosey Fanni Tutti)[ELP047] by ECSTATIC published on 2019-11-11T11:20:20Z Taken from Gavilán Rayna Russom - The Envoy LP/Download [ELP047] • Solo debut album of pulsing, beat-less urges by NYC transdisciplary artist Gavilán Rayna Russom • Includes guest appearance by industrial and downtown figures Cosey Fanni Tutti and Peter Zummo • Cut at D&M, Berlin Transdisciplinary NYC artist Gavilán Rayna Russom beautifully comes into her own with a distinguished solo debut album statement including the voice of Cosey Fanni Tutti and brass arrangements by downtown legend Peter Zummo After decades exploring her sonic personality in various projects inspired by her deep immersion in NYC’s club and avant-garde scenes, Rayna uses ‘The Envoy’ as a vessel to firm up and convey her personal conclusions on intersections of gender and electronic music. Enriched with complex human experience and key influence from sci-fi writer Ursula K. Le Guin’s novel ’The Left Hand of Darkness’ - a book that strongly resonated with her due to its descriptions of an alien race with multiple sexual characteristics - the album is intended to realign misconceptions of Russom’s prescient early work such as 2005’s ‘The Days of Mars’ LP for DFA, which arguably foreshadowed a rise of beat-less and more ambiguous urges that are now commonplace in contemporary dance music, yet were at the time lumped in with retro-fetishist trends. With ‘The Envoy’ Russom returns to a 2019 music scene that’s better prepared with the politics of an emerging new world, and thus readied for her ideas to take hold in the public consciousness. Entwining Russom’s perspectives on gender, the occult, and spirituality, and how they relate to the body and music’s healing properties, ‘The Envoy’ clearly yet ambiguously expresses the artist’s concerns in nine interrelated parts. Practically devoid of percussion, but full of body-moving polyrhythmic pattern, the pieces spill out of the lines of any typically imposed “grid”. Within this loose context, porous to the chaos of noise, Russom smudges a blend of analogue and digital synths to connote an elusive sense of self, encouraging the listener to navigate the music’s curves and silhouettes by instinct. Employing the fluid potential of electronic music at its most fundamental in a way that loops right back to the glyding suspense of her prized early work, even literally incorporating elements of long form solo recordings made in the late ‘90s in the wake of Russom’s psych/noise band Soma. Unanchored by kicks, yet pulsing in its own ways, the album flows with an underlying elegance from Cosey Fanni Tutti’s spellbinding recital of Russom’s text in ‘Kemmer’, set to an organic, orgiastic writhe of arps and stressed noise, and on thru the free-floating organ scape of ‘Envoy’, to acknowledge more grimly industrial impulses with ‘Strength out of the Dark’ and also a towering highlight of the album in ‘Discipline of Presence’, where Russom’s throbbing mass is hauntingly illuminated by plangent brass arrangement from Peter Zummo (key Arthur Russell collaborator). The 10 minute ‘Winter’ then wraps it all up under a titular reference to Ursula K Le Guin’s novel, placing Russom as a filament of solo piano-playing light within the cold expanse of NYC. Genre Electronic Comment by lightbeam Darkly loving 2020-07-23T06:54:25Z Comment by BetterThanNoTaste genius 2020-02-17T10:08:25Z Comment by Fergus McQueenie x 2020-01-23T02:17:15Z Comment by Waterflower wellll done 2020-01-06T14:38:06Z Comment by Those Meddling Punk Kids Brilliant! 2019-12-03T22:01:35Z Comment by Those Meddling Punk Kids The transformation is palpable. Bravo!! 2019-12-03T21:58:56Z Comment by Mucho Bizarre So beautiful 2019-11-21T12:02:56Z Comment by Kirsty P yes ! 2019-11-20T21:32:17Z Comment by Robert E. Livingood Exquisite ! ! ! 2019-11-13T04:05:12Z Comment by Malka I'm in love with this track 2019-11-12T16:43:46Z