# Los Angeles post-rock outfit GYPSUM release lustrous “Follow Me” off debut album

- Link: https://www.nyrdcast.com/los-angeles-post-rock-outfit-gypsum-release-lustrous-follow-me-off-debut-album/
- Published: 2021-08-17T10:00:00-05:00
- Author: Eugene Tierney

[[

**Los Angeles post-rock outfit **
**GYPSUM ****Announce Self-Titled Debut Album 
Out October 12**

**Lustrous New Single “[Follow Me](https://reybee.us13.list-manage.com/track/click?u=f67b4587af2b2ef9aa80ed984&id=46683025f7&e=615f2b8493)”
Out Now**

[**Album release show at Zebulon on October 13**](https://reybee.us13.list-manage.com/track/click?u=f67b4587af2b2ef9aa80ed984&id=2186f5263b&e=615f2b8493)

![](https://i0.wp.com/mcusercontent.com/f67b4587af2b2ef9aa80ed984/_compresseds/b822763a-
5378-8e50-e61f-fb74a11099a3.jpg?resize=329%2C219&ssl=1)

**GYPSUM**
L-R:  Anna Arboles,  Sapphire Jewell, Jessy ReedPhoto credit: **Wes O’Connor**

**AUGUST 17, 2021 (Los Angeles, CA) – **Los Angeles post-rock outfit **Gypsum** 
emerge with the announcement of their eponymous debut seven years in the making.
Out today, “[**Follow Me**](https://reybee.us13.list-manage.com/track/click?u=f67b4587af2b2ef9aa80ed984&id=70b4e837cb&e=615f2b8493)**,**”
is the first track to come off this self-titled album (release date: **October 12,
2021** _via_** Sonic Ritual)**. The track is a lustrous, percussion-driven indie
rock tune that guitarist and vocalist **Sapphire Jewell** says was inspired by the
people throughout history who have been forced to leave their home and seek refuge.“
It’s not about any one movement but rather the constant stream of innocent people
who’ve chosen between starting a new life elsewhere or risking their lives to stay.
It’s sort of a privilege check and that security isn’t permanent.” Rounded out by
guitarist and vocalist **Anna Arboles** and drummer **Jessy Reed**, Gypsum is a 
synergistic exercise in collectivist arrangement, dissolving artistic ego into cooperativity.

**LISTEN TO “FOLLOW ME” **[**HERE**](https://reybee.us13.list-manage.com/track/click?u=f67b4587af2b2ef9aa80ed984&id=590b954e6c&e=615f2b8493)

Gypsum formed as a weekly jam session in 2014 as a way for them to “have a safe 
space to drop the ego that was ever-present in music school,” remembers Jewell. 
After a band field trip to the L.A. Natural History Museum, the band pulled their
name from a mineral that takes both functional and vibrational forms (desert rose
crystal, drywall) – this idea aligned with the possibilities of the project, which
takes its members outside of insular writing and into an ecstatic commitment to 
the songs and one another.

Featuring all three members on backing vocals, Jewell and Arboles’ voices blend 
with atomic affinity, rich alto leads encircled by hazily imploring harmony stacks.
Reed, whose interest in Brazillian polyrhythms and Latin percussion inflect her 
performance, navigates twisting song structures with otherworldly fills. The guitarists’
lifelong love of riot grrl and grunge inform the dynamic builds of their intricate
fretwork. As a group, Gypsum cites influences as diverse as punk, prog, jazz and
psychedelia and takes inspiration from genre-hopping jazz and punk acts like Hiatus
Kaiyote, DIIV and Foals. If it sounds like a science experiment, its three members
view it that way, too.

_Gypsum_ is assembled through the knotty intersections between guitars, imploring
harmonies and exploratory rhythms. At first, the band elaborated around song motifs
brought by Jewell – like on “**Give It**,” with mesmerizing hi-hat work and chasmic,
stop-and-start waves of Sleater-Kinney-esque guitar interplay. But that process 
gave way to holism: “**Lungs**” showcases the band at its most collaborative, on
which outer space riffs and – as Arboles calls it – “hairy-scary feedback” cacophonously
coalesce over sophisticated snare patterns. Arboles brought songs in too, like the
taut building tension of “**Snow White**,” where reverberating gasps paint eerie
strokes around stutter-climb guitar transitions. Jewell sums it up deftly, “Many
bands figure out a system that works for them, but for us it’s different every time.
I like that no matter where one of our songs originates it ends up feeling like 
a Gypsum song.”  

![](https://i0.wp.com/mcusercontent.com/f67b4587af2b2ef9aa80ed984/images/acc668e5-
6372-e740-5ab8-20fe4f6483bc.jpg?resize=186%2C186&ssl=1)

**_GYPSUM_ Track List**

1. [Follow Me](https://reybee.us13.list-manage.com/track/click?u=f67b4587af2b2ef9aa80ed984&id=9133cac14a&e=615f2b8493)

2. Lungs 3. Gull Lake 4. Give It 5. Snow White 6. Grafting 7. Kaleidoscope 8. Satisfied
9. Margaret 10. Disappear

_Gypsum_ was tracked over fourteen days at **Station House Studio** with engineer**
Mark Rains** (_Tanya Tucker, Alice Bag_), a studio chosen for its relaxed energy
so the band could focus on self-producing. Reed used a hodgepodge of kits ranging
from the 1930s to present, swapping out toms regularly and changing snare tunings
to accommodate her “sounds and vision” for each track. Jewell, who knowingly laughs“
I don’t like dry tones,” assembled an arsenal of subtle delay and reverb pedals 
to drench her angular riffs, adding saturated dimensions to post-rock that might
otherwise skew aggressive. Knotty intersections between Arboles’ and Jewell’s guitars,
sometimes layered to the double-digits, are the result of each consulting on the
others’ tone, exemplary of Gypsum’s egalitarianism. Arboles, who took over bass 
duties for this record, also experimented with a vintage Echoplex tape delay, creating
wall-of-sound feedback loops on “**Grafting**” to shake up its organic timbres, 
and producing strange vocal swirls and rewound cymbal psychedelia on “**Margaret**,”
a spoken-word groove inspired by a Joan Didion essay.

Not all sonic experimentation stuck—Korg synths and Roland pads were scrapped—but
the trust required to turn these corners together, even if they’re dead ends, is
part of Gypsum’s extraordinariness. From the icy swirling post punk of “**Gull Lake**”
to the reverb drenched, dark indie pop of “**Kaleidoscope**”, _Gypsum _is_ _a deeply
rewarding listen dense with mystery, complexity, darkness, majesty and beauty.

After seven years, the group members’ admiration for one another has not waned, 
after all, the band states, “In Gypsum, the whole is greater than the sum of its
parts.” The _Gypsum_ interior artwork (featuring a long exposure, pinhole solargraph
taken by drummer Jessy Reed) is “a nod to the way in which the band has moved slowly
over time to create this complete work,” Reed says.

![](https://i0.wp.com/mcusercontent.com/f67b4587af2b2ef9aa80ed984/images/212d45a8-
8d38-162c-5b94-c772b414a92c.jpg?w=1290&ssl=1)

**GYPSUM **
L-R:  Sapphire Jewell, Anna Arboles,  Jessy ReedPhoto credit: **Wes 
O’Connor**

**Gypsum **is **Sapphire Jewell** (guitarist and vocalist), **Anna Arboles** (guitarist
and vocalist), **Jessy Reed** (drums). “Follow Me” is available on DSPs _via_** 
Sonic Ritual **here:** **[https://lnk.to/FollowMeSingle](https://reybee.us13.list-manage.com/track/click?u=f67b4587af2b2ef9aa80ed984&id=2d2efd533e&e=615f2b8493).
Tickets for their Zebulon album release show [here](https://reybee.us13.list-manage.com/track/click?u=f67b4587af2b2ef9aa80ed984&id=c84a55dda2&e=615f2b8493).

[Website](https://reybee.us13.list-manage.com/track/click?u=f67b4587af2b2ef9aa80ed984&id=5a66be140f&e=615f2b8493)
[Twitter](https://reybee.us13.list-manage.com/track/click?u=f67b4587af2b2ef9aa80ed984&id=6f890e306a&e=615f2b8493)
[Facebook](https://reybee.us13.list-manage.com/track/click?u=f67b4587af2b2ef9aa80ed984&id=20308f5755&e=615f2b8493)
[Instagram](https://reybee.us13.list-manage.com/track/click?u=f67b4587af2b2ef9aa80ed984&id=1419f58cd4&e=615f2b8493)

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