Biography
Gabriel Reyes-Whittaker records electronic music under the name Gifted & Blessed, which he also shortens to GB. His productions traverse an expansive stylistic range that includes sample-driven abstract hip-hop, progressive R&B, deep house, and ambient techno built around analog synthesis. One of the originators within the Los Angeles beat community, he draws creative impetus from technological innovation, ancestral customs, and spiritual inquiry. He characterizes his practice as “technoindigenous studies” and runs a label under that heading as an outgrowth of the Gifted & Blessed imprint. Both in performance and in the studio, Reyes-Whittaker employs an extensive arsenal of synthesizers and drum machines, while his DJ sets concentrate almost exclusively on unreleased or seldom-heard tracks of his own making. In addition to numerous singles and EPs, he has released several albums as Gifted & Blessed or GB. The earliest of these, Soundtrack for Sunrise (2004), offered an unrestrained journey through broken beat and acid jazz. Later entries comprise Within These Machines (2013), assembled from his analog-synthesizer investigations, and Heard and Unheard (2023), a more austere machine-soul album issued by Stones Throw.
Reyes-Whittaker first began issuing music as GB while still in his late teens. His initial full-length, Soundtrack for Sunrise, appeared on the American imprint Sound in Color in 2004 and included contributions from Steve Spacek and Airto Moreira. After that record, he devoted several years to the study of analog synthesis and MIDI composition. Toward the close of the decade he founded the Gifted & Blessed label and issued a self-titled EP as Julian Abelar that highlighted his abstract, spiritually oriented approach to beat construction. A period of heightened productivity followed, during which he delivered rhythmically assertive, dancefloor-oriented 12-inch EPs alongside more exploratory projects such as the digital album Healing Tones: Inverted Listening.
Additional monikers and collaborative endeavors soon emerged, among them the Abstract Eye on Eglo Records, the Reflektor on Kyle Hall’s Wild Oats, and the Steoples, an avant-soul duo whose first EP surfaced on Gifted & Blessed in 2012. In 2013 he delivered his second proper album, Within These Machines. That same year he inaugurated the Frankie Reyes alias, a nod to his Puerto Rican roots, beginning with the 2016 Stones Throw release Boleros Valses y Más, on which he reworked Latin standards via an Oberheim synthesizer. Also in 2016, under his principal alias, he contributed the cassette Emotional Topography to Leaving Records’ Modern New Age series. The Steoples maintained the Stones Throw connection with the albums Six Rocks (2017) and Wide Through the Eyes of No One (2021); a second Frankie Reyes LP, Originalitos, appeared between those two titles. Further 12-inch releases as the Abstract Eye and the Reflektor preceded the 2023 Gifted & Blessed album Heard and Unheard, whose productions adopted a denser, darker tone than earlier work.
Reyes-Whittaker first began issuing music as GB while still in his late teens. His initial full-length, Soundtrack for Sunrise, appeared on the American imprint Sound in Color in 2004 and included contributions from Steve Spacek and Airto Moreira. After that record, he devoted several years to the study of analog synthesis and MIDI composition. Toward the close of the decade he founded the Gifted & Blessed label and issued a self-titled EP as Julian Abelar that highlighted his abstract, spiritually oriented approach to beat construction. A period of heightened productivity followed, during which he delivered rhythmically assertive, dancefloor-oriented 12-inch EPs alongside more exploratory projects such as the digital album Healing Tones: Inverted Listening.
Additional monikers and collaborative endeavors soon emerged, among them the Abstract Eye on Eglo Records, the Reflektor on Kyle Hall’s Wild Oats, and the Steoples, an avant-soul duo whose first EP surfaced on Gifted & Blessed in 2012. In 2013 he delivered his second proper album, Within These Machines. That same year he inaugurated the Frankie Reyes alias, a nod to his Puerto Rican roots, beginning with the 2016 Stones Throw release Boleros Valses y Más, on which he reworked Latin standards via an Oberheim synthesizer. Also in 2016, under his principal alias, he contributed the cassette Emotional Topography to Leaving Records’ Modern New Age series. The Steoples maintained the Stones Throw connection with the albums Six Rocks (2017) and Wide Through the Eyes of No One (2021); a second Frankie Reyes LP, Originalitos, appeared between those two titles. Further 12-inch releases as the Abstract Eye and the Reflektor preceded the 2023 Gifted & Blessed album Heard and Unheard, whose productions adopted a denser, darker tone than earlier work.
Albums
Singles
