Delia Gonzales/ Gavin Russom - The Days of Mars

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 & 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 "El Monte" 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.

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 Schültze, Vangelis, with a crucial difference: Delia and Gavin's intuition and interaction are the defining feature of the sound. Just don't be too quick to label them as yin-yang, masculine-feminine dualities at play. "While we are playing these roles of male-female," Delia explains, "it's more humanistic than gender-based." Gavin extrapolates further: "Our separate identities get blurry really fast. In the music especially, it channels some sort of 'life energy' 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."

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 "Rise" draws on these touchstones while remaining true to Delia and Gavin's mesmerizing sound; repetitious sinewaves ripple and undulate to achieve a heightened state of awareness. "Black Spring" 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, "Relevee," though it's easy to imagine your own movie when listening to its swirls and arpeggiations.

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