The mixtape is having a renaissance: On any given day, I can do a coffee-break social media scroll and find half a dozen different co-signs to choose from. But in the last year, few have shined quite as bright as 100% Galcher, an hour-long blend of originals from Brooklyn-based producer Galcher Lustwerk. Harkening back to soul-cleansing washes of vintage house, the softly glimmering 100% Galcher is both supple and forthright, embellished by hushed free-association wordplay. It's the sort of gem you felt inclined to pass around—and by year-end list time last year, word-of-mouth intensified. It was Resident Advisor and Juno's mix of the year, and earned a top-ten placement in Fact Magazine's albums list, as well as Philip Sherburne’s personal rundown for Spin.
It was also a banner release for Blowing Up the Workshop, an online mix depository run by British writer Matthew Kent. Part of the enduring curiosity surrounding 100% Galcher was the difficulty people had in pigeonholing the thing. Was it an album? A mix? Something in between? Kent says that to him, that's "the beauty of it"— that inherent power of a mixtape "to slip through the cracks [of classification] and from there do something really interesting in terms of form."
Even within the broad realm of experimental electronic music, Workshop mixes often explore particularly unsettling terrain—writhing with vicious fury or layering coats of curdled feedback atop. The focus of instalment #26 on abstract fluctuations “which conventional recording wisdom would consider 'incorrect'" is fairly symptomatic of what to expect. Still, a few choose play it a little straighter: Klaus' ruff 'n ready garage stomper, for example, is straight-up dancefloor TNT.
BUtW exists within a growing subset of sites exploring that fertile deregulated zone between mix and mixtape, alongside the likes of London’s Testpressing and Vancouver’s Libramix. Kent’s decision to kick off his project in late 2012 was borne of exasperation: Noticing his journalistic leanings increasingly hemmed in by an overbearing PR machine, he cut loose with the mission of making a platform “based around the art of the mixtape.” He found both a receptive voice and shared ideal in Stephen Bishop, whose Opal Tapes was just beginning to flourish; they now jointly run Mirror & Gate, a boutique imprint dedicated to ultra-limited quarterly cassette runs.
BUtW remains strictly digital, and Kent is aware of the general preconceptions people have about this. "People like physical things; they're easier to relate to, have 'worth'…and are less easy to forget about if you leave them on your desk," he says. "I'm always getting asked why I haven't dubbed a certain piece to tape, or pressed the Galcher Lustwerk to wax yet. As if turning them into a physical product makes them more tangible in a traditional sense, throwing off the shackles of 'mix' and becoming 'album'."
Still, the mixes BUtW has offered up are complete expressions, most as finely crafted as any album. So where to start in the impressive BUtW back catalog? Below, Kent has offered up five suggestions to aid the heads and newcomers alike in making sense of it all.
Lussuria
"Artists had already begun exploring the different possibilities of what a mix might be in the series," says Kent, "but this one really took the idea and ran with it. Each original track (there’s a lot altogether) has been totally annihilated and then reforged into something new by Lussuria."
Shawn O'Sullivan
"Great techno set from Shawn, recorded directly from a live show at Bossa Nova Civic Club in Brooklyn. All improvised and probably only recorded because I kept pestering him for something. It’s cool to have a document like this where otherwise it might not have been heard again."
Honest Jon's
"A mix from a record shop/label rather than an artist, pieced together by one of the guys who works there, and with artwork provided by one of their in-house designers. It's cool to be able to ask for something from an avenue in music that might not otherwise be engaged with so directly, like a shop or a writer or something."
Brown Recluse Alpha
"Some great pieces from comic artist/noise guy CF in his new Brown Recluse Alpha outfit. Again, if I hadn’t commissioned something from him, would some of these bits have been heard? In his notes he says some tracks are only half finished, or will never be finished, and a mix offers a nice relaxed outlet for them to exist for public consumption."
Benedict Drew
"This one is great at conveying the potential for a mixtape to mirror an artists own work if selected carefully. Honestly, when Benedict sent this through and I gave it a listen I figured the majority was formed of his own compositions—when in fact it’s comprised of a huge and varied tracklist, carefully picked, tuned and edited. Possibly a part two coming at some point? Stay tuned."