Review: Gel Set – Human Salad

 

Gel Set
Human Salad

Moniker
Street: 07.07
Gel Set = Chris & Cosey x Throbbing Gristle + Chromatics

Laura Callier, the beat-making and incanting force behind the Chicago-based synth outfit, Gel Set, has taken her rhythmic mastery to Human Salad, an album that takes the ethereal and isolated and waxes primal and blissed-out. The beat-heavy LP intertwines seductive ephemera, ennui and delay-pedaled vocals into Callier’s chilled brand of minimal and industrial techno. She works in the intersection of lo-fi analog and glossy, post-industrial production, adding grit to her formant noise, which toys with silence before collapsing into dense and robust sessions, filling the spaces with saccharine whispers and sensuous vibes. She skirts mutant funk in “Mi Puta,” spaced-out, janky beats in “Double Vision” and mechanical darkwave in “Ether Or.” What seals the deal, though, is Human Salad’s compelling ability to spin us into a grooving trance and keep us moving. –Kathy Zhou