100% Galcher

About

When <i>100% Galcher</i> came out as part of a burgeoning online mix series in June 2013, listeners didn’t have much in the way of background: no previous releases, no biography, no real presence on the scene. You could hear the minimalism of artists like Larry Heard (“Outside the Club”) and the deadpan wit of Green Velvet (“Put On”), but you never felt like he was having a conversation with the Cleveland-born, NYC-based producer’s forebears. If anything, the album’s sense of mystery and detachment made it feel like outsider music—house made by someone who felt more comfortable commenting on the culture from afar than getting involved in it. Of course, that describes a lot of great art, and <i>100% Galcher</i>’s indifference to orthodoxy is part of what makes it a classic, whether it’s his disaffected, status-update raps (“I Neva Seen,” “Fifty”) or the strange hybrids of tracks like “Cricket’s Theme” or “Enterprise,” which turn the grid of classic house into something more like a stream of consciousness. But for all its drug talk and late-night seediness, the core of the album’s appeal is its naiveté: He wasn’t trying to be different—he just was.

via Apple Music