Galcher Lustwerk - 200% Galcher (Lustwerk Music, 2018)

I still remember where I was the first time I hear 100% Galcher - on a packed, sweaty, humid bus in Lachine on the way home from work. Standing. Stuck in traffic. I heard about it from a one-liner in a Pitchfork article or review about something else and was intrigued. Like many others, I was blown away and played it endlessly. I thought it was interesting how just as Galcher blew up, he almost immediately shelved the project and focused on Road Hog or Studio OST releases, which were interesting and occasionally brilliant but weren't...Galcher. His first full-length finally came last year and it was okay. So here he is following up that immortal mixtape with this, and lightning didn't strike twice for me. The problem, I think, is that Galcher Lustwerk came out of the womb fully formed. 100% Galcher was such a disruption, unlike anything else and a revelation. Not something that was built up to after years of honing his craft. 200% Galcher, for starters, is noticeably cleaner - it's still druggy, but not QUITE as hazy and dreamlike as the former. Galcher's lyrics - equally dreamy, full of free association and catchy couplets (you're lying if "I Neva Seen" isn't still in your head) - feel lazier here. "This N' That" just repeats the title over and over. "Niggas" is just a series of glib sentences ending in the titular word - "I'm a nigga, you a nigga, she my nigga, ask the nigga, we some niggas, greet the niggas". Instead of evoking that same dreamy atmosphere, it's annoying and kind of corny. Elsewhere Galcher tries his hand at more electro-based rhythms, to average results - "This N' That" feels overproduced for Galcher, or like an underproduced Daft Punk track. On the other hand opener "Wristbands" is a monstrously slow build where layers are slowly added to built a quietly intricate and busy tune that works. I'm a little more harsh on this record than it probably deserves but I just can't see myself ever reaching for this before its predecessor, alas.

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Nachtmystium/Leviathan - In the Valley of Death, Where Black Metal is King: An Homage to the Roots (Ascension Monuments Media, 2018)

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