Heads High

GB is something special. In a musical omniverse drowning in the throwaway output of countless copies of Ableton Live, his music speaks differently. Listen to his recent Xpander EP for his own GIFTEDandBLESSED imprint or his production on All City’s fifth installment of their Los Angeles 10″ series and you’ll know.

Our generation, to our detriment, has all but forgotten the true power of sound. GB has not. After studying the seemingly Salvia inspired sleeve of his latest release, I decided I had to make the link and dig deeper. This is what I found…

HH: So, I recently picked up the Xpander 12″ and was blown away by what it hid in it’s grooves. I looked you up and then realized that i’d been hearing your music for almost 10 years and just never made the connection! For those people who are in that position, who is GB?

GB: I write, produce and play music. GB is a moniker under which I’ve released much of my music. I’m an informal student of what I call “technoindigenous studies.”

HH: You’ve collaborated with Flora Purim, Airto Moreira, J*DaVeY, Steve Spacek, Baatin and a whole host of others. Listening back over your discography, your sound is diverse to say the least. Can you explain a little about your musical pedigree and the kind of sounds that have shaped your evolution?

GB: I enjoy music from around the world. I’m interested in exploring lots of musical territory. I enjoy drawing from many sources of inspiration, not to replicate a vibe someone’s already achieved by instead to see how I may be able to transmute, reconfigure, or add to that. At the moment, when working with others, I’m most interested in going places with them in which none of us have spent much time.

HH: Are you resident in LA? I once saw an interview with SaRa in which they talk about the energies and vibrations affecting the city and it’s inhabitants, creatively and otherwise. Is this a concept you can relate to?

GB: Yes I am currently a resident of L.A., so I suppose I relate to that in the sense that living here I’m subjected to the earth energies and social energies that are dominant. L.A. is the communication center of the world, something like Earth’s throat chakra. It adds up that there’s so much sound being transmitted out of L.A. But on the flip side, for my taste, all of my favorite music comes from throughout the world, from both likely and unlikely places.

HH: You record under a few other aliases too. Could you tell me a little more about them?

GB: I’ve released music as Julian Abelar, Frankie Reyes and the Reflektor. Keep in mind that GB is more of a “character” than anything. There is a sound that has come to be associated with GB. Julian Abelar, though related in vibration to GB, is a very different thing, more focused and intentional. Julian Abelar is an ode to the nagual Carlos Castaneda and his shamanic initiation with the nagual don Juan Matus as documented in his series of books. The name Julian Abelar is a name that comes from their lineage of sorcerers. So again, that project was intentional, and releasing it as Julian Abelar gave me the space to let it be what is was. Had I released it as GB, it might have been considered a disappointment to some who were expecting what they got out of Soundtrack for Sunrise. The Reflektor is a similar thing. And Frankie Reyes is a derivative of my actual name, emphasizing and paying homage to my Puerto Rican ancestry. If you spend time with the music, you’ll get a sense of the subtle variations.

HH: You seem to have a particular affection for analogue electronic equipment. What inspired you to evolve in that direction?

GB: I am most interested in a hybrid sound. My earlier releases were mainly sequenced digitally via computer software with a combination of samples and live instruments (I’ve never used software synths). I’ve played analog synths on most of my releases, but in recent years I’ve spent lots of time learning about the connectivity of these machines and how to use them in a configuration that allows the machines to speak to one another and keep in time with each other, like a band. And of course, this allows me to operate the entire band by myself in real time. Plus the sonic quality of analog synthesis is special. You can hear it immediately. There are many studies you can find out there on the compromises with digital vs analog. But that’s not to say that you can’t do interesting things with digital sound that you can’t do with analog. It’s only a matter of taste and understanding. But having said that, electronic music in general has a definite limit for me.

HH: Talking of inspiration, looking at the artwork on your most recent Xpander release and reading some of the copy on your site, there is a definite spiritual thread running though your art. Is this intentional, and if so, how do you relate art to spirit?

GB: Art for me is an attempt to make matters of spirit tangible. I use art to translate inspiration from spirit into a three-dimensional density-based experience. Art affects its audience, one way or another. My aim is to affect my audience positively, to inspire others to be inspired.

HH: To quote directly from your site you are ‘an active advocate and practitioner of therapeutic sound healing techniques’. Could you expand on this please? What role do you think music has in the human healing process?

GB: Sound health is a very real thing. You can input sensory data into any of the senses and have a healing effect, and just the same you can have a detrimental effect. Without being conscious of it (for most people, anyway), you’re either helping or hurting your body by what you give it. So in my Healing Tones: Inverted Listening release, I emphasized specific colors and frequencies using analog synthesis again with the intention of activating the body’s innate self-healing capabilities. I’ve used these principles in several yoga studios here in L.A. as well as university lecture halls and alternative healing spaces.

HH: The most recent offering i’ve heard from you is the Raices Africanas sound collage under the Frankie Reyes moniker. It features a lot of traditional african drum music. What are your thoughts on the traditional music of the African diaspora and what relation have these rhythms got to your electronic output? Do raw organic drum music and programmed electronic music share any common ground?

GB: African music is inextricably a part of who I am. My rhythms, be they human-generated or machine-generated, are very African in essence. The drum is the most primal universal mode of communication and vehicle for achieving higher mind states. I don’t think we’ll ever stray too far from the drum because it basically equates to our life force itself. And in our technological age, in this transitional moment in human history, electronics are in many ways as organic as hand drums.

HH: What projects are you working on at the moment? Anything we should look out for in the near future?

I will be putting forth more live electronic offerings, as well as more earthy human music. I am still a student of music in the end, so as I continue to learn and expand, the breadth of my output will continue to do the same.

What is Gifted and Blessed? What are it’s aims and objectives?

Gifted and Blessed is the outlet for my music. Nothing more than that.

GB Links:

Website//Facebook//Twitter//Myspace

 

 

By Etienne