Wet

Description

*Wet* is the fifth studio album and the tenth release by Black Meteoric Star. Black Meteoric Star is a project launched by Rayna in 2006, while she was living in Berlin; it combines her long-standing passion for dance music culture with spiritual themes, the world of drag, and the foundational experiences she has lived within S/M culture. Black Meteoric Star has always played a role as a vengeful figure in Rayna's life and work; this new incarnation continues this legacy in response to the current political climate. *Wet* celebrates the long-standing shared history between electronic music and queer "leather" and S/M culture, while imagining a future where these two cultural expressions would be reunited once again. Electronic music and leather/S/M cultures are two ways in which queer people have historically woven community ties, created and shared knowledge, and ensured their mutual safety. The current administration demonizes queer people by relying on a false moral framework based on respectability; it is a trap. No attempt to appear "respectable" will suffice to humanize queer people in the eyes of this administration or to help us obtain the rights we deserve. Revitalizing the link between electronic music and queer leather/S/M culture affirms the cultural power of these two worlds, at a time when it is more evident than ever that we are the guarantors of our own safety. Rayna, a transgender woman deeply attached to all these cultural forms, carries a strong message through this album. A DJ and electronic music producer for over thirty years, she has also been organizing community cultural events for just as long. Involved for decades in the "kink" and BDSM worlds, she is a recognized and respected DJ in the New York "leatherdyke" scene. Rayna made international headlines in 2017 when she revealed her transgender identity while on tour with the band LCD Soundsystem. In 2018, she left this Grammy Award-winning group to focus on projects more closely related to her queer experience, including the creation of Voluminous Arts, a cultural organization supporting trans artists. Black Meteoric Star is part of a thread running through Rayna's work, already present in her project Paper Eyes and in her participation in the group Black Leotard Front. This thread of discussion includes a focus on comics or graphic novels for adults, drawing inspiration from her experiences as a sad and lonely young trans lesbian; often harassed, she found an escape - as well as the possibility of revenge - through the X-Men comics and *Dungeons and Dragons* books.