Unofficial cat# VOL002 is Black Meteoric Star's 3 Love Songs EP.

Rayna on the release:

"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 record and the two poems I read on the NMWP 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."

3 Love Songs

Love Song #3

Black Meteoric Star - Love Song #3

Love Song #2

Black Meteoric Star - Love Song #2

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”.

Disco

Freaks Only

Black Meteoric Star - Freaks Only

Purr Atraxxxxion

Black Meteoric Star - Purr Atraxxxxion

Quincox

Black Meteoric Star - Quincox

Apparitions on a Dance Floor

Black Meteoric Star - Apparitions on a Dance Floor

Fluid Feline Forms

Black Meteoric Star - Fluid Feline Forms

Disorienting Shapes

Black Meteoric Star - Disorienting Shapes

Muscle Machine

Black Meteoric Star - Muscle Machine

Manifesto

Black Meteoric Star - Manifesto

At the end of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s 15 hour serial film Berlin Alexanderplatz, viewers are treated to a 2 hour epilogue permeated with snippets of Kraftwerk, dream sequences, fog and elements of drag. In the relentless spirit of that kind of head fucking, one proposal for how you might think of Black Meteoric Star’s new album NYC Beat Boxx is as a similar kind of psychedelic epilogue to last year’s epic 3xLP Disco. The comparison isn’t frivolous or light, considering Black Meteoric Star’s sound emerged during the time Rayna was living in Berlin. That city’s energy has continued to reverberate within the music she creates under the alias. While the queer creative legacies of Berlin remain, on Beat Boxx geographic focus shifts to New York, where Rayna lived from 1997 - 2004 and where she’s made her home since returning from Berlin in 2009.

With this explicit geolocation, NYC Beat Boxx draws inspiration from vinyl “beat collections”, which heavily circulated in New York during the 80’s, such as Apexton’s Rhythm Masters series. The beats on those records, conceived more as functional sonic tools rather than fully realized tracks, have an uncanny ability to crystallize the feeling of a moment within their repetitive minimalism. Some titles directly refer to this ability, such as “Acid 3am” and “One Night In The Bronx''. The Black Meteoric Star project consistently utilizes a tape deck Rayna was gifted for her high school graduation to function as a sort of sketchbook for ideas; this record is no exception. NYC Beat Boxx began while Rayna was still recovering from Covid-19 and unable to engage a full studio of equipment. Instead she focussed on drum beats alone, building tracks on an analog drum machine that were nearly complete without the addition of synths or vocals. Covid hit New York City particularly hard in those initial months of the pandemic and in March, April and May of 2020 the experiences New Yorkers were having with it were nearly categorically different from those of most U.S. residents because of the ways in which New York’s rhythm and culture of the street allowed the virus to spread quickly before quarantine measures were put in place. Even in its completed form, with synthesizer and vocal elements added sparingly, NYC Beat Boxx is both a celebration and evocation of New York, through rhythms that channel that same uncanny ability of the “beat collection” to archive specific moments in time and space. Club music has the distinct pleasure and purpose of giving us the opportunity to process emotions through our bodies, through dance; the rhythmic repetitions of beats, enticing meditations of sound. This offering by Black Meteoric Star honors New York’s history of consistently giving space for the healing that dance music provides, during the extremely challenging and isolating time which we continue to live through.

As Voluminous Arts’ lucky 13th release, NYC Beat Boxx also creates an opportunity to reflect on what the New York based label has accomplished in its first 18 months. In addition to releasing a spectrum of Rayna’s music; from newly recorded intimate cassettes like Transverberation, to archival gems like Crash Convention and RFNAL, to the previously mentioned epic Black Meteoric Star 3xLP Disco, the label also organized the first iteration of a now annual two day conference on nightlife; the Halloquium, and released Philadelphia based multidisciplinary artist Rat Porridge’s debut album Live from the Plant. Voluminous Arts also launched the articles section of its website, proposing new and more substantive ideas about the possibilities of music journalism.

NYC Beat Boxx

Hey Asshole

Black Meteoric Star - Hey Asshole

Legg's Egg

Black Meteoric Star - Legg's Egg

Luminol

Black Meteoric Star - Luminol

Risper Doll

Black Meteoric Star - Risper Doll

Traffic Light in Fog at a Crossroads

Black Meteoric Star - Traffic Light in Fog at a Crossroads

Bells

Black Meteoric Star - Bells

Incessant low frequencies, layers of processed room noise, pulses of synthesized tones, a voice subsumed in textural harmonics, a violin stretching across rivulets of hiss… To listen to Slabs Vol I is to stand in a room full of ghosts all talking at the same time. This makes sense considering that much of Gavilán Rayna Russom’s recent writing has discussed the connections between her mediumship practice and her creative work as a composer, producer, and DJ. Elements of club sounds are present, but overt signifiers like kick drums and looping melodies are not. It’s as if a raging dance party with a DJ entrancing a peak hour crowd exists somewhere, in another room or another time, nearby enough to hear and feel, yet also distant. Perhaps the most notable feature of the four tracks on Slabs Vol I is their extreme density and the way that the sounds of the spaces they were recorded in becomes a primary element of their musicality. Engaging with each of these pieces is like being clothed in sound as a physical material, perhaps for a ceremonial occasion, rite of passage or moment of deep introspection.

In a 2021 interview with Madison Bloom for Pitchfork, Russom described Slabs Vol I as “the achievement of a production goal I’ve had for a long time of creating these really dense slabs of sound that are also a kind of a deconstructed dance music… like this physical embodied sense of big glaciers of sound crushing against each other.” The description is apt. Slabs reckons with the long arc of Rayna’s creative output, especially her work as Child in the early to mid 90’s, which was either shared in listening sessions with close friends or occasionally via small run home-dubbed cassettes with xeroxed covers that she distributed through her “ended before it began” early DIY label venture Sole Productions. Just as Sole Productions held the nascent seed of what would eventually become Voluminous Arts, Rayna’s work as Child holds much of the latent and exploratory sonic language that forms her current creative vocabulary. Slabs Vol I makes this more explicit than ever.

Only a tiny amount of the Child recordings have seen a more widespread release (notably on Trevorshaus’ Familars Vol I compilation and Voluminous Arts’ own archival release of RFNAL). Some unreleased Child recordings were also layered into tracks on Rayna’s 2019 album The Envoy and 2020’s Secret Passage. The tracks on Slabs Vol I follow suit (with an occasional shred from the Child project embedded amongst their dense layers), but the primary source material for these four pieces is a set of recordings Rayna made in the chapel of St. Paul’s Church in Los Sures of Williamsburg, Brooklyn in early 2017. The relationship between this EP and the Child recordings is one between moments in time whose distance in terms of numerical years is outweighed, and troubled, by the proximity of their poetic concerns, movements and discoveries and the way those become tangible through their conversational interplay.

Slabs Vol I

An Eternal Unfolding

Gavilan Rayna Russom - An Eternal Unfolding

Soundwords

Worth in Dirt

Jentlemen - Worth In Dirt

"In The Mix" is Voluminous Arts new mix series featuring sets recorded via our DJ Community Program, where we invite trans & NB artists to come to our office and practice on our DJ equipment and broadcast via our streaming channel. Premiering the series, we have an incredible recording by SUPERMCN4STY who came to visit us all the way from Austin, Texas in January.

Privately known as Steph, DJ SUPERMCN4STY is a non binary open format DJ and producer based in Austin, Texas. They have been in the game for the last 5 years as a full time DJ. Their experience includes bars to nightclubs, weddings, private events, live streaming events such as Boiler Room and major music festivals such as SXSW.

Voluminous Arts is a community organization and record label bringing forward resources and opportunities from trans artists in NYC. This year, we started a fundraiser that will allow us to launch a Community Resource Hub with more resources for trans artists. If you are interested in learning more head to the following. link—every dollar and every share helps us reach our goal of helping more trans people. 😊

https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-us-launch-resources-for-trans-artists

Voluminous Arts: In The Mix 001 — SUPERMCN4STY

"In The Mix" is our new venture which features sets recorded via our DJ Community Program, where we invite trans & NB artists to come into the office to practice on our DJ equipment and broadcast via our streaming platforms. As the second drop of the series, Andy Iwancio who has over 20 years of DJ experience and delivered an incredible performance on her last tour this February.

Andy is a deejay from Seattle, by way of Baltimore, who’s 20 year career has made her a staple of rave scenes on both coasts as well as helping found “mudpieluv” one of the longest running female-led crews in the country.

She has shared her love of bright, vocal-heavy, sometimes fast, dance music as a part of legendary queer dance crews “Blowpony” and “Butch Queen” too. For the last 10 years she has taught deejaying to youth, as well as trans/nb adults. This self-proclaimed “rave grandma” still finds time to tour as a comedian and deejay to this day.

Voluminous Arts is a community organization and record label bringing forward resources and opportunities from trans artists in NYC. This year, we started a fundraiser that will allow us to launch a Community Resource Hub with more resources for trans artists. If you are interested in learning more head to the following link below—every dollar and every share helps us reach our goal of helping more trans people.
https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-us-launch-resources-for-trans-artists

Voluminous Arts: In The Mix 002 — Andy Iwancio

"In The Mix" is Voluminous Arts' mix series featuring sets recorded via our DJ Access Program, through which we provide free of charge access to DJ equipment to anyone self-identifying as transgender. Trans people interested in learning to DJ, upcoming or accomplished Trans DJs are able to hone their skills, record high quality mixes, and livestream.

This time around, ÆON brings fast, psychedelic techno, with soaring melodys and banging kicks.

Voluminous Arts is expanding to become a cultural arts center for trans people and trans culture to thrive. Support our work: https://withfriends.co/voluminous_arts/join

Voluminous Arts: In The Mix 003 — ÆON

"In The Mix" is Voluminous Arts' mix series featuring sets recorded via our DJ Access Program, through which we provide free of charge access to DJ equipment to anyone self-identifying as transgender. Trans people interested in learning to DJ, upcoming or accomplished Trans DJs are able to hone their skills, record high quality mixes, and livestream.

Expect the unexpected when the two divas of Voluminous Arts go against each other on the decks. This deck was recorded back in February when Anka Raczynska and p1nkstar were in town for our Three Days: A Voluminous Arts Festival at KAJE back in February.

Voluminous Arts is expanding to become a cultural arts center for trans people and trans culture to thrive. Support our work: https://withfriends.co/voluminous_arts/join

Voluminous Arts: In The Mix 004 — Anka Raczynska x p1nkstar

"In The Mix" is Voluminous Arts' mix series featuring sets recorded via our DJ Access Program, through which we provide free of charge access to DJ equipment to anyone self-identifying as transgender. Trans people interested in learning to DJ, upcoming or accomplished Trans DJs are able to hone their skills, record high quality mixes, and livestream.

This time, Pleaseunblockme brings trans, queer and gay focused acid house and electro.

Voluminous Arts is expanding to become a cultural arts center for trans people and trans culture to thrive. Support our work: withfriends.co/voluminous_arts/join

Voluminous Arts: In The Mix 005 — Pleaseunblockme

In The Mix" is Voluminous Arts' mix series featuring sets recorded via our DJ Access Program, through which we provide free of charge access to DJ equipment to anyone self-identifying as transgender. Trans people interested in learning to DJ, upcoming or accomplished Trans DJs are able to hone their skills, record high quality mixes, and livestream.

Voluminous Arts is expanding to become a cultural arts center for trans people and trans culture to thrive. Support our work: withfriends.co/voluminous_arts/join

Voluminous Arts: In The Mix 006 — theoretic

"In The Mix" is Voluminous Arts' mix series featuring sets recorded via our DJ Access Program, through which we provide free of charge access to DJ equipment to anyone self-identifying as transgender. Trans people interested in learning to DJ, upcoming or accomplished Trans DJs are able to hone their skills, record high quality mixes, and livestream.

Voluminous Arts is expanding to become a cultural arts center for trans people and trans culture to thrive. Support our work: withfriends.co/voluminous_arts/join

Voluminous Arts: In The Mix 007 — Cutterfly

Voluminous Arts: In The Mix 009 — adaa

Building new worlds through trans-centered experimental creativity.
Established by Gavilán Rayna Russom.

Popular tracks by Voluminous Arts