{"id":7896,"title":"Gavin Russom","kind":"bio","url":"https://www.videohistoryproject.org/gavin-russom","version":"93f58b676f964a93c77ae02d0b99cbf032c692cdbb0fef5353940d15445e796d","modified":"2011-06-18T00:00:49+00:00","credits":[],"authorKeys":[],"subjects":["bio"],"metadata":[{"label":"First name","value":"Gavin","url":null},{"label":"Last name","value":"Russom","url":null}],"citations":{"page":"\u0022Gavin Russom.\u0022 Video History Project, Experimental Television Center, 2011. https://www.videohistoryproject.org/gavin-russom.","publication":null,"risUrl":"https://www.videohistoryproject.org/citation/7896.ris"},"links":[{"label":"http://www.deliaandgavin.com/","url":"http://www.deliaandgavin.com/","relationship":"record body link","contentType":null}],"sections":[{"name":"body","source":"VHP record body","generated":false,"characters":6806},{"name":"summary","source":"existing VHP generated summary","generated":true,"characters":718}],"content":{"section":"body","source":"VHP record body","generated":false,"text":"http://www.deliaandgavin.com/ The DFA and Astralwerks Records are proud to announce the release of Days of Mars, the first full-length album of New York artists Delia Gonzalez \u0026 Gavin Russom, on October 4th, 2005. These four extended voyages are a full-on visionary listening experience, more about innerspace than outer. The Days of Mars (in reference to the book by author and lover of Hilda Doolittle, Winifred Bryher) is the realization of a sound first hinted at on their hypnotic \u0022El Monte\u0022 single from 2004 and a multi-disciplinary vision that is barely contained by genre or labels. Already renowned in the art world (or rather, worlds), Delia and Gavin show in international galleries their continuous outstreaming of stunning video, performance, theatrical, musical, and visual art, to name but a few. Their prodigious work stems from the collaboration between the two kindred spirits, but the story goes back a bit. It was the end of the 20th century in New York City. Delia Gonzalez, originally from Miami, moved to the city in the mid 90\u0027s, working in various dance groups, including Fancypants, a guerrilla theatre troupe prone to burst out in absurd dance on busy street corners. Gavin Russom, a recent transplant from Providence, Rhode Island, was doing magic shows as The Mystic Satin. In the days when NYC performance art embodied aspects of cabaret, live music, and dance, they ran in similar circles, but were still strangers. That is, until one fateful night at a fashionable though unexciting loft party. Bored stiff among the painfully hip and dance-averse, Delia and Gavin met on the empty dancefloor. Delia remembers: \u0022When I saw Gavin and he saw me, we knew we were destined to work together. I just knew he was my best friend and that he was going to be a big part of my life.\u0022 Gavin reflects that feeling: \u0022We just decided we were gonna have fun together, recognizing in each other an eagerness to make something happen. So we just danced all night together, when nobody else danced.\u0022 Within a month, Delia was assisting the Mystic Satin and soon after, they were creating performance pieces together, and branched out into prop-making and set design, modern dance, movies, and videos, not to mention a heavy metal band, Fight Evil with Evil. Gavin says that at the time, \u0022even just going out, we would make outfits together. Everything we did was really collaborative. We\u0027ve had this ongoing conversation and all the art we make just comes directly out of that. The objects that we make have to do with our interaction.\u0022 As the two made more films together, they began to create their own soundtracks. In the year 2000, Gavin, always a bit of a tinkerer, began to build his own synthesizer to avert a crisis he was having with music: \u0022At some point didn\u0027t know how to make music anymore. I couldn\u0027t relate to the instruments. I just thought visually that analog synthesizers were something that appealed to me, with all the knobs and cords, connecting things together, being able to create and change sounds from scratch.\u0022 The artistic aesthetic was not far behind its function, and soon enough, the electronic components Gavin devised became a part of their gallery exhibits, showing alongside collages, art objects, props, costumes, drawings, and videos. They soon began creating live music under their own names. Listening to the expansive modular, analog synthesizer music that the duo creates on The Days of Mars evokes the early electronic music of the seventies, as created by pioneers like Terry Riley, Klaus Sch\u00B8ltze, Vangelis, with a crucial difference: Delia and Gavin\u0027s intuition and interaction are the defining feature of the sound. Just don\u0027t be too quick to label them as yin-yang, masculine-feminine dualities at play. \u0022While we are playing these roles of male-female,\u0022 Delia explains, \u0022it\u0027s more humanistic than gender-based.\u0022 Gavin extrapolates further: \u0022Our separate identities get blurry really fast. In the music especially, it channels some sort of \u0027life energy\u0027 that makes distinctions irrelevant. In our experiences and research, this energy is really a fundamental and natural part of being a person -- probably being anything -- and being here in this world.\u0022 The world glimpsed on The Days of Mars is an incredibly vivid one. Touching upon their love of everything from Alice Coltrane to acid-house, Santeria ritual music to the kosmiche side of krautrock, opener \u0022Rise\u0022 draws on these touchstones while remaining true to Delia and Gavin\u0027s mesmerizing sound; repetitious sinewaves ripple and undulate to achieve a heightened state of awareness. \u0022Black Spring\u0022 pulses and builds like a climax to a long-lost horror flick (think zombies or a post-apocalyptic world). And the two are at work on a short film for the epic, expansive third track, \u0022Relevee,\u0022 though it\u0027s easy to imagine your own movie when listening to its swirls and arpeggiations. \u0022Since everything we do is theatrical, our music becomes like a soundtrack,\u0022 Delia explains, and it should be noted that the pair are fans of a wide spectrum of cinema. From Italian horror to Czech new wave, psychedelic Chilean director Alejandro Jodorowsky to Hollywood musical maestro Busby Berkeley, these films influence their sound as much as any musician. Visually inclined, Gavin also sees \u0022a definite landscape aspect to the music. When I\u0027m playing, there\u0027s this sensation of traveling over previously un-glimpsed topography.\u0022 Plateaus and vistas emerge in the contours of the music, but it\u0027s not just strange terrain, as Delia reveals: \u0022At the time of Days, there were a lot of things that I wanted to express but couldn\u0027t put into words.\u0022 Such an emotional core centers the fluctuating peaks as well as the more languid and ambient tracks like \u002213 Moons.\u0022 Floating through such fertile soundscapes, one easily enters into a dreamlike state. \u0022We really wanted to create something that was an experience to listen to, a spiritual experience that took you somewhere,\u0022 Gavin says and Delia adds: \u0022We see it as a world that you can enter and explore. When we play, the music puts us in a place where we\u0027re really receptive and open to inspiration, and we\u0027d like that sensation to arise in our listeners.\u0022 Delia and Gavin both verify that the vibrations of this synthesized music give rise to new visual information, fueling new ideas for their art. But don\u0027t think that their music career is somehow separated from their visual work. \u0022We see everything as one,\u0022 Delia makes clear. \u0022Everything we\u0027re doing now, in these performances, this ongoing project, it directly goes back to when we first met.\u0022 To which Gavin finishes: \u0022We feel that the music, the performance, the art, it\u0027s all one thing, creating this new world.\u0022 Let The Days of Mars both book and soundtrack your trip to such a destination.","offset":0,"nextOffset":null,"totalCharacters":6806,"complete":true},"rightsUrl":"https://www.videohistoryproject.org/terms-service"}