Galcher Lustwerk

100% Galcher

GI-410

Galcher Lustwerk
“100% Galcher”

A1. Parlay
A2. Put on

B1. Outside the Club
B2. I Neva Seen
B3. Enterprise

C1. Kaint
C2. In the Place
C3. Cricket’s Theme

D1. Fifty
D2. Dockside
D3. Lil Bit o Chocolit

℗ + © MMXXII Ghostly International

Written & Produced by Galcher Lustwerk  

Mastered by Josh Bonati

Cover Illustration by Kurt Separately

Design by Michael Cina

Production by Molly Smith

GVL LC 47563




Published by The Ghostly International Company (ASCAP)

Cover_Front
Cover Illustration by Kurt Separately

Cover_Back

Insert_Front

Insert_Back

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B

C

D

A

C

Cover_Inside
Only access to this is to rip open the record sleeve and you gain access to the lyric sheet and more photos. 

CD
Jewel Case 

The most important product of creativity is the process.

︎︎︎ Order to chaos. Chaos to order. 

Cover_Front and Back Source Design

All work began in computer, printed to physical, and then pasted up. My process was that any design or text changes are manually performed after it was printed out. Few changes were made but I welcomed them for the process to add character to the final design. 

 

Labels_Process
Under Right Flap

Back of cover mockup.
Unused process work was pasted on the back of the final print out, which happend to be an old YWFT poster, used as a canvas.

Cover_Inside Design
Printed on inside of sleeve

Label_Final Mockups

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B
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D

Label_Early Mockup
I started the design process with the labels, I think it was more about “starting somewhere” than actual concepts. 

Label_AI Treatment Explorations

Insert_Front Pasteup

My printer was starting to die during this project, the drum was printing with noise and kept getting worse after each print.  It was actually perfect but we decided we wanted a minimal amount of noise. 

The final work ended up being an abstract grid over the photography. Freeing yet everything lines up.

Excerpt from FOG: Made in Cina book.

Insert_Back Pasteup

As the project continued, I realized I was in deep and knew texture wouldnt pay as big of a role, so I started to just print out and scan the work back in and use photoshop to fix margins, etc.

Top 
Thoughts about doing a makers mark for this project.

GL at stay basement
NY

I have no reccolection on how this came about but I made this DVD cover during the process of design.

CD_Back Design
Source Design for the back cover of the Compact Disc

“Letter and Image”
by Massin
Book and puck used for a scanning weight for all images shown above.

The story behind the mixtape. I felt it was extremely important for GL to tell his story within this release as it is such a landmark work. 

1

2012 was a confluence of events. This recollection follows no particular order, but just know that people and places happened to align. Opportunity presented itself and I decided to send a mix of songs I'd been working on to a stranger from the UK. Earlier I started a new music moniker under the name Galcher Lustwerk. The name first appeared to me via reCAPTCHA, you know when you had to type in random words to prove to a website you aren't a robot? I screen grabbed it, reminding me of Gerald Donald (another black producer from the midwest) aliases Heinrich Mueller, Der Zyklus and Dopplereffekt.


Let's see. Around this time there were two good friends of mine starting a record label, Young Male and DJ Richard. Quinn (Young Male) worked extra hard - WM001 and WM002 he lugged far and wide to any record store he could. By the time it was my turn for the 3rd release, the label already had distribution at Honest Jons in London. I finally knew I could get my music out legitimately, professionally mastered and pressed to wax! Still had tons of tracks left over though, so I continued to post to SoundCloud...

2

I’ve been making 'albums' of some sort since I could figure out how to operate a cassette recorder. 6 or 7 years old I'd tape over my parents' cassettes and draw a new cover on the blank side of the liner notes. In middle school I recorded loops on the family computer w Sonic Foundry ACID music and a demo of Fruity Loops, and with Photoshop I could print out artwork, burn cds and put everything in a jewel case. In high school I picked up Ableton 2.0, learning what phantom power microphones were in the process. This all happened in my little microcosm in Cleveland Ohio. My dad drove me to this shop on the west side Bent Crayon, where I would get anything the blogs told you to get + whatever the clerk recommended. CDs stayed in their packaging, there was always an overflow of vinyl stacked on the floor. I was too shy to listen to anything before buying.


After high school I tried to get a job at Guitar Center. Once I passed the 3rd interview they found out I was underage and I couldn't take the job. In art school I was in a few noisey bands. We'd make specific Myspace pages for each band, and had vague ambitions to play at some of the storied DIY venues in Providence at the time, Grow Room, The Living Room, Troy Street, Mars Gas.

In fact, Myspace was a major jumpstart for what I'd consider a career in music. In 2006 a local dj named Morgan (Louis) contacted me via Myspace, noticing that we had similar music tastes and lived in Providence. His party was on a weeknight at a downtown gay club, thrown weekly with guest djs, sometimes myself. It brought the straight college crowd out + Sparks cans were 2 dollars before midnight or someshit?  It was caffeinated electroclash debauchery. From then on I'd meet Alvin (Aronson), Da Sul (Kim), and a bunch of other creative ppl, dabbling around, trying out music projects, media projects, retail projects.


We threw parties mostly in Prov, but the college crowd was too transient to build anything sustainable. Most of us moved to NY so slowly we started moving the parties there, too. Small basements and off-beat karaoke bars in Manhattan used to be the only places we could throw parties at. We were influenced by Mr. Sunday night in Gowanus, The Bunker at Public Assembly, Dope Jams in Clinton Hill, and even Plastic People out in London... We ended up settling into a few places, a hidden basement below an East Village cocktail bar (Stay), and the 5th floor of an office building in Koreatown (5bar).

I would say partying, hedonism, drugs, techno - that’s what helped me get siked on culture at-large in New York. It's a pure kind of joy, people are too zoned or too lit to talk shit or care. I'd always dream of raves growing up but they basically disappeared once I came of age. I can't imagine making indie rock or rap music would've taken me this far. Something about the tempo of techno, swing, shuffle, frequencies felt inherently personal. I got tinnitus, don't remember when exactly, but I blame sidechain compression, djing in rock clubs, going to noise shows, and using cheap in-ear earbuds on the subway.

3

It was an afters and we were having a trip in Providence in 2012, walking downtown, empty, 6 am. It felt like a Mayan calendar reset was happening. We went back to the apartment and listened to Basic Channel and Juicy J on shuffle. Morgan wouldn't stop rolling joints, Alvin was playing 45 records at 33, or at least it seemed like it. I think that particular weekend the "GL" project crystallized - the sound, the feelings, the joy and the fatigue of clubbing, dancing, drinking, drugs etc. I'd had a fulltime job doing design at a biggish ad agency for a few years now, so I'm like “imma actually buy some hardware, Young Male and DJ Richard were starting to get gigs and press, the time is now!”


I thought I was on track to be a design director or art director at an agency, or my own agency, working in a cool office all day. By 2012 I was burnt out and sick of the rat race. A FAANG company throws millions at you only to rip the brief and do it themselves a year later. A boss chides you for using a photo of a black man in a mockup. Some days I felt like a token, other days I felt invisible. Show up late, leave early, I found out a month later that I had gotten a promotion, no one even told me? I quit to work w/ some friends at a startup.

Needing shopping therapy, I went to the music store and grabbed a Dave Smith Tempest, then a Waldorf Blofeld on Ebay. I did a lot of research before buying them both, actually. I bought em more for their ergonomics, it all fit nicely on the table in my bedroom. One is analog, one is digital, sharp vs. smooth, dirty vs clinical. At some point I picked up a TEAC cassette recorder along the way, too.


The lyrics became simple, direct, "remember you aren't a singer songwriter-type dude, remember listening to Juicy J and Basic Channel? This doesn't need to be difficult at all. You want it to be fun, don't take shit serious. I wanted to feel like you were tripping, maybe having a bit of heatstroke, or dehydration. Your body feels detached, your jaw clenched. People become furniture. Light becomes the main character, surfaces show their age in real-time. Wabi-sabi shit. Tracks came out of these and the song's vibes naturally wrote themselves.

4

The sad part. I foolishly left my computer in a sunroom / lighthouse? The morning after a winter storm at this work retreat. Condensation grew inside the motherboard and almost half my masters, the most recently finished ones! were erased - the only copies were now on the 192kbs mp3 mix I sent Matt. Alas. Nearly a decade later, though, Ghostly International has supported me in reviving the lost tracks and remastering the mix as a complete album. “the original mix was never mastered” so I hope older listeners can find something new here.


Looking back on 2012, the greatest takeaway is that if you see an opportunity, act on it. Making music can be an alienating experience, especially for DJs who travel a lot, it’s all super isolating. It's easy to express loneliness in the music itself, but when it comes down to getting things done, putting music out, you def should go on that journey w other people, friends, or maybe just a group of people online, or some mf squirrel you see by the river eating a flower pedal idk. build things with your friends then they can build to help you.

This story ends in early 2013.

“ima put this on
ima put you on

one minute i’m on
next minute i’m gone”