September 2026
Producer and artist Gavilán Rayna Russom, has created compelling and exciting music for decades. You might recognize her from her solo works, various monikers and collaborative projects Paper Eyes, The Crystal Ark, and Black Leotard Fronts, or as the former synth player for LCD Soundsystem. But we’re here to chat about Black Meteoric Star, her uncompromising noisy electro alias that burst onto the dance floor in 2006 while Rayna was living in Berlin.
Black Meteoric Star is celebrating twenty years with WET, BMS’s fifth full length album and the 10th release, via Ransom Note Records and Dark Entries.
DoStuffer Abhijeet Rane chatted with Rayna for a deep dive into her world of electronic music, queer S/M culture, and the sexiest X-Men in existence.
Album design by Dasha Lugovkin | Photo by Olympia Lolo
Abhijeet: In your own words, what is WET, and where is it coming from?
Rayna: One thing that’s interesting about WET is that some of the tracks are brand new and were made for the album, but some are older. I was doing a lot of archiving while recording the album, and realized I had part of a new album and all of this unreleased Black Meteoric Star music. “Pombajira,” for example, is from 2008.
So WET is, in a way, a comprehensive statement about the project as a whole. It makes explicit certain threads that have always been there but maybe haven’t always been absolutely upfront – one of the biggest being queer S/M culture, the sexuality of the music, and electronic music as part of the social environment of queer cruising and sexual culture.
Making an album is also a really emotional, visceral experience for me. With this record especially, I put a lot into researching things that have been important to me for a long time, processing things I’ve been through, and asking: How did I end up here?
The album became cathartic. Just as I feel clearer about what Black Meteoric Star is really about, I feel like I know what I’m really about, too.
A: A line from your statement that really struck me is that WET “pushes back on all forms of respectability and celebrates deviance and perversion as a way of making meaning.” At the same time, queer and trans people are arguably more visible than ever. How do those things coexist for you?
R: That’s exactly what’s so interesting. In contemporary times, we probably have an unprecedented level of queer and trans visibility. But the queer and trans expressions that achieve that visibility are often extremely legible, very much within what’s agreed upon as acceptable inside a creative-industry model.
So you have many more queer voices in the mix and, at the same time, less challenging of these models of normalcy that have historically been used to oppress, silence, kill, and harm queer people.
I wrote a poem for Pride years ago where I said, essentially, that queerness, transness, and lesbianism aren’t identities I use as bridges into acceptability. They’re positions from which I critique normalcy.
To me, that’s what queerness is: the constant affirmation that something is missing, something is wrong, something doesn’t fit. There’s value in being a problem. Transness, for me, is also about motion, evolution, change, and questioning this idea of fixity.
We now live in a historical moment where it’s possible to be queer and conform. It’s possible to be trans and conform. And WET is sort of asking: But what about nonconformity?
Photos by Elodie Adam
A: What are some moments when electronic music, queer S/M culture, and Black Meteoric Star really clicked together for you?
R: One of the biggest was a record-release party some friends invited me to around 2016 or 2017. They had this weird punk-industrial band called L'Amour Bleu, and somehow they had access to a condemned house in Brooklyn that was about to be bulldozed. They were gay men connected to leather culture, and the party was very cruising-oriented. It wasn’t exactly a sex party, but it was pretty close. Everything locked in for me. I was like, this is where Black Meteoric Star makes the most sense.
More recently, I DJed the leatherdyke afterparty Power Snatch at Folsom Street Fair. When I stepped up to the decks and did exactly what came naturally, it was the perfect soundtrack to fist each other. It was uncanny how much sense it made.
Then, at International Ms Leather in 2024, everyone was crowded inside the dungeon in the pouring rain. I looked around, and there was every gender expression you could imagine, a room full of people who were genuinely very different from one another. And it was a room full of perverts.
It was also maybe the only time I can really say I watched a whole room full of people take impeccable care of each other. I remember thinking: this is the thing conservatives say is the worst possible thing, and yet this is the space where people are actually in reality with one another and taking care of each other.
A: What could nightclubs and promoters learn from S/M culture?
R: One of the biggest things is the difference between sustaining something and constantly trying to make it bigger.
In nightlife, if something is successful, the assumption is often that it should grow. In S/M culture, there’s much more of an idea of keeping something at the size that makes sense for that event.
And then there’s care. In the part of the S/M world where I feel most at home, leatherdyke culture, there’s a lot of thought about impact. How do we make sure elders can be in the space comfortably? Trans people? People with disabilities? How do we honor the histories of people of color who’ve been important to S/M culture and make sure those spaces are sustained? And let's have some snacks at the function.
That conversation isn’t always as present in club culture. There are absolutely spaces where it is happening, and I think those spaces are really important. I think that’s the future.
That’s also part of why I conceived WET the way I did. It’s not an answer as much as a conversation starter.
Photo by Elodie Adam
A: Let’s get into the actual tracks. Why open the return of Black Meteoric Star with “5AM Open Air Sunrise”?
R: “Sunrise” is poetically about a beginning that’s also an end.
I also hadn’t released a Black Meteoric Star record in about five years. “5AM Open Air Sunrise” felt like a way to quietly reenter the conversation.
A: What part of WET gets stuck in your own head?
R: In “Control Top,” the filters start freaking out, and the synths almost sound like language. To me, it sounds like, “I do it for my baby, my baby, my baby.” They’re just weird ghost frequencies that happen because of how Black Meteoric Star is recorded.
A: Which WET track most deserves to soundtrack a porno?
R: “Squeezed Into These Jeans,” just because I want to see how freaky that porn would be.
A: Which track becomes your secret cruising signal from the DJ booth?
R: “Subwoofer Speaker Freaker.” It’s a flag. A hard flag.
A: Between “Subwoofer Speaker Freaker” and “Butt Plug Thumb Drive,” we have to know – what’s the most erotic piece of musical equipment?
R: Reagan Holiday will play a synth with a vibrator, and I really love that.
But to make it very specific to me: when I perform Black Meteoric Star live, I have this weird Korg MS-20M. It’s a desktop synth, but I mounted it on a guitar strap.
Photo via Marvel & Romy Jones
A: Who are Black Meteoric Star’s X-Men video vixens?
R: Rogue. 90s Rogue’s hair, for me, is the hottest thing that has ever existed in the history of visual culture.
But Storm and Jean Grey have to be there too. So those three!
A: If Black Meteoric Star were a D&D character, what are her stats?
R: Charisma, intelligence, and dexterity are the big ones. They’re all pretty high.
A: Across history, what would be the ideal dance floor for WET in LA at any point in the city’s history?
R: I have to cheat and start with San Francisco: The Catacombs. One hundred percent.
In LA though, there was this lesbian-run warehouse party I went to in 2016 or 2017, early in my transition. I can’t give details because of the nature of the event, but IYKYK. That would be the ideal WET situation.
Photo via griffith observatory
A: Give us one stop in LA that you can’t miss when you’re visiting.
R: Griffith Observatory at sundown. Big fan.
A: Most important question: Would Garfield enjoy WET?
R: Garfield’s a freak. We all know. He’s grumpy, though. But I would say WET is to music as lasagna is to food. So I think Garfield would like WET.
A: Maybe not “5AM Open Air Sunrise.”
R: If that 5AM open-air sunrise is on a Monday, Garfield is gonna have a problem.
WET is now available for purchase and streaming on Bandcamp – and hopefully on a dance floor near you soon!
Keep up with Rayna via Voluminous Arts, her cultural organization, record label, and community hub entirely led by trans artists.
