Golden Mixtape

Once new to LA, Gel Set found herself overwhelmed by the expansive city. Without letting it get the best of her she shook those feelings off and powered forward. She shared her hustle as well as a story of a talking roach and a doppelganger – one of which a reality and the other showcasing her innate ability for storytelling. Once you read all she had to say, make sure to check out her new album, Body Copy, out this Friday, October 20th.

Kendra: When you first left Chicago for LA it was for sound design and production. When did you change things up in terms of career goals?

Gel Set: It’s a funny story really. I’d been smoking ketamine out behind the Mobil on Washington and Crenshaw with the teenaged attendant when I felt a sharp pain in my head. An empty can of Chef Boyardee clattered to the ground, and a giant cockroach crawled out. It whispered, in a voice that sounded like Joan Crawford, “You must take a chance on the sounds that make the people dance.” Who was I to argue with a talking bug? I went back to the abandoned CarMax I’d been living out of (right outside Gardena), and recorded the bare bones of the album.

Naw just kidding. Gel Set’s been a creative project of mine since 2012 and I currently work a fulltime job in post-production in LA, which I’ll do until they fire me for touring too much (hi, anyone reading this want to take me on tour?), and I sometimes still take on freelance sound design projects. The dream remains to dive deeper into sound design.

Kendra: In the past month or so I’ve heard a couple of tracks inspired by the loneliness that LA presents. Your “Don’t You Miss Me” included. What is going on in this city that you think is causing this widespread feeling?

Gel Set: I felt down on myself for feeling so overwhelmed by LA until I read Maggie Nelson’s memoir The Argonauts where she describes her partner Harry’s similar feelings about the DIY scene here – creative scenes can feel more fractured and out of reach than in smaller cities. There is such a vibrant music and creative world in LA. I’ve seen countless incredible shows here, but everything’s so spread out and after driving in rush hour twice in a day sometimes the performance I want to see is another 45-minute drive away and I just want to stay home. I blame the geography and the high population. There are so many events constantly happening I live in an eternal state of FOMO.

Kendra: So we’re about to hear “Don’t You Miss Me” on your new album Body Copy. Although LA was kind of a bitch at first, did you find some positive notes about it that made it onto the album?

Gel Set: I was fortunate to land some random sound projects here right off the bat, some by the sheer force of “fake it til u make it.” I did a score for a Lyft driver’s very politically incorrect short film (for experience), I schmoozed my way into a dialogue editing job (cramming John Purcell’s textbook on the subject as I went), hustled at a five-month internship at a sound studio, and was graced with a few gigabytes of sound effects by a generous soul. I made sure to incorporate these samples into every song (Easter egg hunt–can you find them?).

Kendra: The album goes along with this belief you have about the world being full of body copies. I’ve read that everyone has something like seven people that look like them in the world. Do you think there’s truth to that?

Gel Set: While seven sounds like an arbitrary number, I saw one of my doppelgangers about 13 or so years ago. This story is true, unlike the ketamine/talking roach story where I may have lost your trust as a storyteller.

My friend Eric sent me a picture of “me” at a rave in Europe. This girl looked so much like me, I stared at the pic for a long time…wondering if there was any chance I’d gone to a Euro rave and not remembered that sweaty, wild eve. He’d stumbled across the picture on MySpace (she was a stranger though if I remember correctly), and I would click on her page every so often to see what the other “me” was up to. She lived in Norway, was a visual artist, had a cooler haircut than I did, had a cool Norwegian name I’ve now forgotten.

One day, I saw on her Myspace page that she’d been accepted to Pratt, and, I swear I’m not making this up, about six months later I friggin SAW HER IN A PARK IN NYC. I was on vacation there, walking with friends, glanced up, and there “I” was, sitting with “my” friends. I stopped in my tracks, mouth agape, transfixed by the coincidence. She glanced up, we caught eyes, and she gave me a scowl, probably because I was intensely staring at her like a freak, and, because I’m horribly, horribly shy, I walked away and basically never looked at her page again.

What do you even say to a doppelganger? Actually, I met another doppelganger in Chicago and said “Wow, cool nice to meet you!” but she approached me first. She’s really awesome, also an artist named Marieke McClendon. Our mutual acquaintances in Chicago would sometimes mistake us for one another.

Kendra: After the album drops in October, will you be heading out on the road or playing local at all?

Gel Set: I’ll be heading out to do a mini-tour in the midwest in November with my official record release show on November 16th at the Empty Bottle, and then more touring TBD in the winter.

Kendra: Let’s think about Chicago. If you had to make a mixtape for the Windy City, what five songs would be on it?

Gel Set:
Virna Lindt – “Underwater Boy”
Group Rhoda – “Virtual Dancer”
Kelly Lee Owens – “Keep Walking”
F INGERS – “My Body Next to Yours”
Patience – “White of an Eye”