Gel Set - Body Copy

LP version. 2017 release. Laura Callier came across the phrase Body Copy while using some now forgotten freeware at a now forgotten job that didn't want to pay for the name brand goods - body copy, as in - the text to be entered into the body of a document. "What is the content of your body's copy?" she asks you to ask yourself. Then, she moved from Chicago to Los Angeles, a bit on a whim, a bit to escape winter, a bit to pursue sound design and post production. She would go out, and search for familiar faces at shows, in stores, on sidewalks. It's an overpopulated city, but it's a lonely city. Strangers everywhere looked slightly familiar, like if you took the face of a loved one and popped it in the microwave for ten seconds. The world is full of Body Copies, and the nerds haven't even perfected replicants yet. Gel Set is the art that Callier makes in her noisy bedroom, currently in Koreatown. She sold most of her gear before moving to LA, but on this album, in varying amounts, she used a Tempest, a Monomachine, an Evolver, a Mopho, a Yamaha RX5, Arturia soft synths, Ableton, a TR-8, a Nord Rack, and a Virus A. Maybe some other things? She also says she got a bunch of film samples/sound effects from an unpaid job she did in LA that she used as much as possible on this album to justify her excessive free labor. By got, she possibly means stole? Stealing is wrong, she says, but so is the exploitation inherent in some unpaid industry jobs. "Just sayin," she mutters, and changes the subject. When asked her influences, she says "I like crunchy, hard electronic music that sounds like it was made by someone who is growing mushrooms on their person," whatever that means, and she says she loves the raw emotion of Karen Dalton, the abstract story-telling and dissonance of late Scott Walker, the synthesis of Mort Garson and Tangerine Dream, the heavy sounds of Hogg, and she's ever flattered by comparisons to Chris and Cosey. She says she also loves music with a pop sensibility, from Erasure to Jesse Lanza. She's a multimedia artist who plays in several bands besides Gel Set (her solo project): Simulation, dreamy psychedelic electronic duo with Whitney Johnson (Matchess, E+, Verma); Athleisure, duo with video artist Jason Ogawa (Tarnation); God Vol 1, duo with visual artist Nicole Ginelli.