Wanna follow Gel-Sol on Twitter?

http://twitter.com/gel_sol

We'll see how in to this I get...Twitter really seems like an excuse for everyone to make an ass out of themselves!

Yer Pal,
Gel-Sol

Data Breaker: Gel-Sol Approaches Orblivion

Many thanks to Dave Segal from The Stranger for writing this article!

http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/data-breaker/Content?oid=1847110

Gel-Sol (Seattle producer Andrew Reichel) is this town's reigning Orb fanatic. Dr. Alex Paterson's long-running ambient-dub-house collective has spawned several disciples worldwide, but Gel-Sol can stake a claim to being one of the finest in the tradition, balancing serious musical chops (he's a staunch prog-rock fan) with witty spoken-word samples over four albums.

My introduction to Gel-Sol came with Music Made for You... and by You I Mean Me (recorded in 2003, but reissued by the esteemed and now-defunct UK label em:t in 2004). The disc lays out a luxurious banquet of rich synth swirls, languorous bass lines, and slackly funky beats. This is music for long-attention-span owners and those fond of subtly unhinging the doors of perception. It's deep and plush, poised between the chill-out room and the opium den—except for "Numby Numbs," which is an uncharacteristically revved-up cut animated by jagged rhythms and sprightly yet stabbing keyboard riffs. But Music Made for You is mostly geared for lounging in style, stratospherically. Ladies and gentlemen, we are floating (and giggling) in space.

As for Gel-Sol's dub credentials, they could receive a boost depending on the outcome of his entry into Choice Cuts' Horace Andy remix contest; Gel-Sol interestingly reworked "Watch We" from Andy and Ashley Beedle's Inspiration Information album. (The winner will be announced on the Choice Cuts website.)

Recent live gigs at the Church of Bass and Re-bar have found Gel-Sol delving into ambience that's aswirl in glittery vapor and redolent of beneficent herbal vibes at the former, while the latter finds him creating a churning, dubadelic soundscape. Both sets represent some of the region's most supremely heady head music.

On Gel-Sol's "Skub," a 2009 single on the local Innerflight label, however, his production shows a more up-tempo tendency, though it still doesn't move at techno/house's brisk clip. Rather, it's a chunkily percussive, dubwise funk track with a mutedly beautiful melody and chilly synth tones forming a halo around the rhythmic bustle. This looks like an interesting new direction for Reichel.

As for his current endeavors, Reichel says, "Most of my recent live material is music for a future release, a double-length concept album called Terramecha, that's about a planet inhabited by robots. I'm also working on a follow-up to [2008's] IZ (written for my niece), because I got another niece on the way."

On top of all of this, Reichel is nearing completion of Gel-Sol's Adventures Beyond the Plunderworld, which parodies the Orb's debut album in the form of a collage of movie/TV/radio dialog snippets that touch on scatological, sexual, pharmaceutical, and musical matters. You'll eventually be able to hear it online for free. Speaking of which, you can hear some of Gel-Sol's music at www.myspace.com/gelsol and www.soundcloud.com/gel-sol. It's all very absORBing.

Yer Pal,
Gel-Sol

SKUB: New Gel-Sol track.

Get it from Beatport.

IFM-006 : Left Coast Sampler

Various Artists


Welcome to the left coast, where Innerflight Music has one ear to the underground, listening for the best in heady electronica to bring to your dj mixes and playlists. Our diverse music sampler gives you a taste of what's to come in the future at Innerflight. We invite you to get lost within Gel-Sol's world of ambience; get bombed by Nick Douglas' in-your-face bass; get minimal with Mynus; and then make your great escape with the one and only novaTRON.

Innerflight Music – IFM-006 - Gel-Sol – Skub – Original Mix - Chill Out
Gel-Sol takes you to a seashore somewhere in deep space, immersing the ears in warm, foamy eddies of resonance. A textured bassline and evocative overlapping melodies bob on the shimmering surface of ebbing and flowing tidal synths; washing in this new track from Seattle's resident expert in cosmic soundscapes.

Gel-Sol - Skub by Innerflight Music

Innerflight Music – IFM-006 - Nick Douglas – The UnaSampler – Original Mix - Tech House
'The Unasampler' puts the best of both worlds into one startlingly explosive little package. Intelligent track progression with creative drum programming for the heads combine with a stompy bassline and irresistible stuttering rhythm for the dancers. All wrapped up with electrified synths and felicitous samples make for one banger of a house floor stomper.

Nick Douglas - The UnaSampler by Innerflight Music

Innerflight Music – IFM-006 - Mynus – Ish – Original Mix - Tech House
Without question, a dark and dirty dance track for dirty dancing nightcrawlers. However, with this minimal techno sparkplug the devil is in the details. A faint faraway vox echoes beneath the beat, providing a unique sense of depth and a spooky emotional vibrance while a wobbly, pumping bassline neatly cleans up after the ravaging breakdown.

Mynus - Ish by Innerflight Music

Innerflight Music – IFM-006 - novaTRON – The Heist – Original Mix - Breaks
Hotter than burning rubber, 'The Heist' makes you an accomplice in a warped high-speed aural getaway from the left coast to the far east. With a precise blending of action-theme flavored funk, hypnotic flutes and tribal percussion, The Heist is a sneak preview of what NovaTRON is bringin' in 2009.

NovaTRON - The Heist by Innerflight Music

Yer Pal,
Gel-Sol

GEL-SOL Live: Chillography 06.13.08

http://soundcloud.com/gel-sol/gelsol-live-061308

Live at Chillography 101
June 13th, 2008 @ The Transcendent Church of Bass

Track list:

Forward
Improbability Sequence
Mourning Wok
Disko Bay
Tacoma Screw
Bubble in the Sky
Halo of Stars
The Power Crystal
Octogon

Yer Pal,
Gel-Sol

GEL-SOL Live: BONKERS! 01.09.09

Gel-Sol Live at Bonkers!
http://soundcloud.com/gel-sol/gelsol-live-010909
The Re-Bar, Seattle, Washington
January 9th, 2009

Tracklist:

Spores
Caldera
Spectacular Optical
Clouds of Ocean
Paths to Frenzy
Mecha Ritual
Asmodeus

Yer Pal,
Gel-Sol

Gel-Sol - IZ: Cyclic Defrost Review

Seattle-based electronic producer Andrew Reichel (aka Gel-Sol) has cultivated something of a reputation for ‘widescreen’ downtempo / ambient soundscapes, with his 2004 debut album under the production moniker on Em:t ‘1104’ calling to mind The Orb’s surreal sample-laden psychedelic flights of fancy circa ‘Adventures In The Ultraworld.’ A scant twelve months on the heels of last year’s ‘Unifactor’, this third album ‘IZ’, a joint release between the Dublin-based Psychonavigation label and Canadian imprint Upstairs sees Reichel constructing a nine-part ‘all ambient adventure’ for his niece Izabella, who was born last year. From the very outset here, the familiar melodic aesthetic heard on previous Gel-Sol albums is firmly in place in, with the opening title track introducing the lush, almost orchestrally-arranged fusion of rich ambient synth pads and flowing melodic elements, the resulting blend sitting somewhere between Pete Namlook’s similarly cosmic and beatless mid-nineties output and Tangerine Dream-style prog.

Curiously though for an album dedicated to an infant relative, while the overriding mood tends towards uplifting and optimistic territory, there’s still a trace of underlying tension and uncertainty, with the sampled sound of distant police sirens and what sounds like a homeless man creating an effective counterpoint to the bleak-sounding string swells that roll throughout ‘Mourningwok.’ It’s these vaguely unsettling undercurrents that also add an unexpectedly dark and poignant edge, such as the dark subterranean bass tones and disembodied hypnotherapy samples that float through the ominous ‘Raneboze’, and maintain the levels of intrigue whilst preventing proceedings from drifting completely away into a blissful ambient / chillout waft.

Gel-Sol - IZ: The Silent Ballet Review

Gel-Sol - IZ

Score: 7/10

IZ begins with the calm inhalation of artificial intelligence.Gel-Sol lets the sunset simmer in the pan as a warm wash of synth caresses our ears and bundles us up for our journey. This is one of those albums that makes me believe that the machine playing the CD is actually a sentient being, and we are privy to its personal dreamscape. The machine, in this case, is pretty pleased about life! Think M83’s Dead Cities, Red Seas, Lost Ghosts meets Hal from 2001: A Space Odyssey (minus the menace), and you have a pretty good idea of what Gel-Sol's third album sounds like.

The opening track "IZ" bathes itself in fuzzy ocean waves and a warm pelt of synthetic chords. An oboe soars high aloft like an albatross on the solar wind. As we drift above the planet, we get a few echoey vocal acknowledgements from the host computer courteously admitting us to its subconscious. These voices are probably from obscure films, originally, but we've never seen them, so the illusion is maintained. Onward to "Mourning Wok"! We pass by a pair of alien species speaking in an indecipherable tongue on their back porch before we slide down a lugubrious river of lush, chordal melodies. IZ is heady and full of cinematic flourishes. If you've ever heard Front Line Assembly and wished they would just get off the speed and take some downers, then this album is for you.

Third track "As Far As Eye Can See" would be the hit single if they played ambient space drone on the radio. For this irresistible song, Gel-Sol ups the vibrancy by stealthily adding a muffled, bubbly bass beat along with a texture of flitting, atmospheric rhythms to get us moving at a delightful little trot. This is the only song on the record with any discernible "beat" but you’re not going to be compelled to dance unless you are a stardust-eating, ballerina panda bear, so watch the animals dance instead. On top of this pleasant, motoric rhythm a guitar hooked up to a Tesla coil does a call-and-response with a large crowd of samurai on the main deck of our dream space station (one of my favourite moments). Gel-Sol's use of samples and overlapping melodies makes for some easily-achieved synaesthesia. He manipulates his sound layers quite fluidly, and wow, I am enjoying this record!

The overall sound is a polished, psychedelic ambience, much akin to a beat-less Boards of Canada or Boom Bip. But, where those bands go "glitch," Gel-Sol goes "shimmer," especially through the middle third of IZ. Our computer friend gets to a point where it’s between sleep and waking, and it begins to breathe through its giant, metal bellows, and exhale through thousands of 16-bit vents. As if in response, a lady (Computer Gaia? Big Brother’s sister?) gets on the dream P.A. with a fairly brain-washing tone and encourages the dreaming computer that its family loves it when it dreams. At first I was really turned off by this voice, as it felt like an interruption, but I eventually forgot she was talking at all. I drifted back into the flow of slow-motion respiration, letting the voice convince me that I was safe, until I was back inside the lunar bio-dome, arms folded over my knees as I stared out the window at Earth, wondering if I'd ever return. The album is an hour in length, but I could have listened to several hours more. Once the final resolving melody, the softly spoken words of love and wash of rain faded away, I pressed play again.

There are many drone and atmospheric records that are lovely, but few really sound as major key as IZ. Certainly, Stars of the Lid are a reference point. This music is so optimistic, it could be a soundtrack to the planet that the Flaming Lips are actually from! Tropical rainstorms, submarine pings, droids singing amidst the spray of the ocean, shape-shifting birds chasing swarms of nano-bots, a metropolis from Blade Runner being bombed in the distance, and an orchestra expressed as the sigh of one string wafting its way through a galaxy - some dudes just know how to use their keyboards. In another's hands, this sound bank would reek of cheese and saccharine novice. Gel-Sol has crafted a wonderful album of songs fit for you and your computer while you both sleep peacefully, side by side, leaving our wanton civilization behind.

-Nayt Keane