Galcher Lustwerk makes House music with a very distinctive twist. Residing in the deep recesses of House music, much of Galcher Lustwerk’s music would be indistinguishable from the rest of the genre if it wasn’t for the addition of his voice. Galcher Lustwerk’s nonchalant, stony vocal is the personal artistic stamp that sets his records apart from his peers.
Releasing music since 2014 via Tsuba and his own imprint, Lustwerk Music, EPs like “I Neva Seen” and “Nu Day” have established the artist’s unique sound through stripped-back House arrangements that finds itself on an album for the first time with Dark Bliss.
Out via White Material, where Galcher Lustwerk released “Tape 22” in the past, Dark Bliss finds its way onto the vinyl LP format in 2018. With tracks rarely breaking the four-minute mark, but built on the foundation of the repetitive nature of House music, Galcher Lustwerk’s music accommodates a variety of listening experience and can easily flit between the DJ record bag and your headphones.
Progressive loops saunter with little progression while wistful keys float across the expanse of the tracks and Galcher Lustwerk’s voice underpins each track with a daydream-like quality. Although he broods over familiar themes in Hip Hop like on a track like “What U want me to do”, others, like “Red Rose” are more congruous with House music’s one-line samples, but the lyrics all maintain a tentative distance from any real concrete meaning inferred on them.
Short, reduced pieces make up Dark Bliss, through musical vignettes that distil Galcher Lustwerk’s sound down to individual tracks and tie the album together as a whole. With no elongated dub versions like those on his EPs, Galcher Lustwerk’s debut album is the most fully realised execution of the sound he’s steadily cultivated as an artist. It’s a record whose variety of production work is something we can appreciate with a view from the booth, while his vocal communicates something more visceral and approachable.