Galcher Lustwerk’s first entry for Ghostly International is house music for pop-ups, polished and poppy and ragged and raw in turn.



Galcher Lustwerk credit: The Fader

“High” culture is full of bizarre contradictions at this stage in history. Many of the most popular, trendiest, hippest music on the planet started out in underground cultures and communities. Hip-hop, electronic music, rock ‘n roll, was all made by and for weirdos, misfits, lunatics, outcasts. Hip-hop has gone from the street corners of New York and the aerial antennae of London’s pirate radio stations to being the soundtrack of drinking $1000 bottles of Kristal on a Wednesday night at the club. Rock ‘n roll, once America’s greatest bogeyman, is practically a geriatric museum at this point. House music went from dingy, raw concrete bunkers and re-purposed bowling alleys and arcades in Chicago to white sandy beaches in Ibiza and festival main stages the world over.



This exportation of underground culture creates an interesting dichotomy. On one hand, we’re happy for the artists themselves, as they’re likely making a better living than they would if they were merely making music for lunatics and drug addicts. More resources means more opportunities, better equipment, and more resources which, ostensibly, can mean better records and live shows. On the flipside, it can mean that the original community might not be able to access the music any longer. It can also lead to a kind of poppification of the music, shaving off the rough edges until it becomes safe and predictable enough for mass consumption.



With contemporary culture’s obsession with the hip, cutting-edge, and authentic, it makes sense that we’re seeing more interplay and overlap between “high” and “low” culture. It’s happening quicker than ever, as well, thanks to the accelerationism of digital technology. Taken together, this has created a maelstrom where the highest, hippest cultural moments are happening in run-down, eccentric, out-of-the-way places.



With contemporary culture’s obsession with the hip, cutting-edge, and authentic, it makes sense that we’re seeing more interplay and overlap between “high” and “low” culture.

This is where New York producer Galcher Lustwerk enters the conversation, making music that is both the pinnacle of cosmopolitanism yet still raw and ragged and weird enough to thrill the longest-standing house music devotee.



Information is Galcher Lustwerk’s third full-length and first for legendary label of al things arthouse electronic, Ghostly International. Information comes hot on the heels of last year’s well-received 200% Galcher, on Lustwerk’s own Lustwerk Music. Ironically, given the step up to a major indie label, Information is a bit more lo-fi and raw and experimental than 200% Galcher. There’s the same bright, bold house piano chords; the same tropical percussion; the same polished plastic 4/4 kicks – it’s just all seen through a soft-focus filter, like listening to early ’90s house music through half-an-inch of styrofoam and a tapestry of tin foil and Christmas lights.



There’s the same bright, bold house piano chords; the same tropical percussion; the same polished plastic 4/4 kicks – it’s just all seen through a soft-focus filter, like listening to early ’90s house music through half-an-inch of styrofoam and a tapestry of tin foil and Christmas lights.

This stylized gaze actually casts the early ’90s aesthetics in a slightly more glowing light. A good majority of the tracks on Information feature Lustwerk’s low-key rapping/speak-singing, in a style known on discogs as “house-hop.” It brings to mind the toasting of ballroom culture, the faux continentalism of Acid Jazz, the housier moments of downbeat, or the more electronic aspects of baggy/Madchester. The problem being, if we were to be honest, a lot of those genres are total shit, and have aged even worse. Galcher Lustwerk offers an opportunity to get it right, this time around.



That’s the bright side of the mainstreaming of underground musicks. Innovators and experimentalists are given more resources to do their best work, legitimizing their peers and underground music in the process. Handmade electronic music, classy house music combined with mellow, artful rapping all have serious potential. It would be a shame to consign them to the dustbin of history.



Information is out now on Ghostly International.



If you’re in Portland, Or. Galcher Lustwerk is performing tonight at the Bit House Saloon as part of the Spend The Night series, with Nathan Detroit and Ben Tactic!



Spend The Night with Galcher Lustwerk, Ben Tactic, Nathan Detroit @ Bit House Saloon, Portland, Or. 11.22.19

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