Gavilán Rayna Russom
Gavilán Rayna Russom is an interdisciplinary artist based in New York City, she has released music under various names, including Black Leotard Front, Black Meteoric Star, and The Crystal Ark, as well as collaborative work with Delia Gonzalez and the band LCD Soundsystem (of which she was a member for more than a dozen years). Known in the electronic music community as “The Wizard” for her technical prowess, she has built instruments for the likes of James Murphy (LCD Soundsystem), Tim Goldsworthy (Unkle, The Loving Hand), and Bjorn Copeland (Black Dice).
Over the past two decades Russom has produced a complex and compelling body of creative output that fuses theory with expression, nightlife with academia, and spirituality with everyday life. Her renowned prowess with analog and digital synthesizers as composing instruments locates itself within her larger vision of synthesis; an artistic method of weaving together highly differentiated strands of information and creative material into cogent expressive wholes. The central thread of this practice is the exploration of liminality as a healing agent, a phenomenon she has been engaged with since childhood. Her work is cumulative and experiential. It requires time and attention to take in, and it powerfully rewards those who bring their time and attention to it.
Born on Beltane into a family with roots in several strong European folk healing traditions, Russom has been a practicing witch for most of her life. She began communicating with the dead in childhood and after moving to Brooklyn in the late 1990’s began to take part in Misas Espirituales which gave context to her childhood experiences and shaped her divining practice. This path eventually led her to formal initiation as an Espiritista in 2010.
