no binaries of any kind

elsewhere review

Gavilán Rayna Russom – Trans Feminist Symphonic Music

(Longform Editions)

Longform Editions 24, LE’s February 2022 quadruple release, includes an epic 71 minutes long composition by Gavilán Rayna Russom, entitled Trans Feminist Symphonic Music. It consists of four movements: Elegy, Expansions, Beauty and Truth. In her work, especially of the last couple of years, Rayna has attempted to completely liberate her music composing from any fixed constraints of categorizations. A practice set in her framework of dealing with fluidity and the complexity of human experience of gender. Reading about her theories about the power of the trans feminine, it becomes apparent she’s both forward thinking and reflective to a great degree. Expressing her ideas through electronic music connects them to the human collective experience that can be felt rather than understood through words. Harmonies appear where sounds – that are generally thought of as opposites – combine into a natural beauty, referred to as the difference tone. A mirror of the complexities in the world around us.

The Trans Feminist Symphonic Music’s harmonic, meditative opening Elegy of the first movement, dedicated to the trans women who have so often been relegated to the shadows, transforms into the second more confrontational Expansions section where colliding elements deconstruct conventions to create surprisingly complex connections of fluid sounds in space, evoking an atmosphere of gentle and pleasant chaos. It is followed by the more reflective Beauty movement, a moment to turn inwards with a pulsating center and a droning hum that slowly expands back outwards until it reaches Truth where scraping rhythms and effects mount into a concrete cacophony of noise that eventually fades into whiteness. A perfect and powerful all encompassing arch is built in just over an hour’s time, longform becomes distillation.

Rayna’s extensive expertise and experience in club music, the DJ scene and love for raves translates into a different approach to attentiveness, the extreme attention to detail in this new composition doesn’t mean the listener shouldn’t find a personal approach. The listening should be in tune with each individual’s body, and so you are free to experience this music’s energy without expectation, be it drifting, dancing or absorbing. Rayna’s ideas can only make sense if you are open to leaving established formulas behind and try to feel the natural force that flows through all things including time and space. In this sense fluidity becomes key and is wonderfully expressed in this new work by Gavilán Rayna Russom, that I find hugely inspiring.

(Jenus)