TERRE THAEMLITZ

SD Card (5)

Housed in poly-sleeve, with 10 insert cards printed on 220kg matte paper. Design of digital elements includes +75pp. PDF text (plus translations in JP/GR/DE), Full HD video (EN/JP) and 48k/24bit AIFF audio

Play All SD Card (5)

Boomkat Product Review:

Over two hours of new music from Terre Thaemlitz (including some unbelievable remixes from DJ Sprinkles), plus video pieces and text, made with lucid logic and unflinching insight to expand upon Soulnessless’ themes of cultural overproduction,moving attention to the wider framework of how patriarchal structures in society effectively undermine democracy. You’ll need to spend some quality time with this one - please remember that we support Terre and Comatonse Recordings' efforts to keep projects offline, minor, and acting queerly. When purchasing this item, we ask you to refrain from uploading and indiscriminate sharing in any form. <3

Leading on from Soulnessless [2012], Terre Thaemlitz makes convincing arguments for Deproduction in her latest, and perhaps most significant work for Comatonse. Centred on her engrossing essay questioning the ethics of having children, the package also holds two durational collages of solo keys melded with samples from Gay and Incest Porn, plus one piano solo, and a pair of exquisite Deeperama mixes by DJ Sprinkles, all adding up to one of the most important releases you’ll encounter over the next 12 months or more.

By drilling down into societal taboos from the oblique angle of a white, queer artist based in and observing the culture of Japan, Thaemlitz makes shockingly poignant assertions about the contemporary human condition of late capitalism which, once digested, may well leave you reeling, or at the very least cognisant of her pretty-much-inarguable logic. “The recognition that having children is unethical is not to be confused with a desire to empirically stop people from breeding. It is simply pointing out an irony underlying centuries of societies using religions and other institutions to morally enslave our sexualities to the breeding of sons of men.”

How does this relate to the music? Quite directly, in fact. In a feedback of image to text and sound, Terre uses her preternaturally sensitive audition to really riff on the listener’s nerve endings quite like nobody else. In Names Have Been Changed (Sound/Reading for Incest Porn) she paints an ostensibly tranquil scene of location recordings, filigree electronics and heart-in-mouth strings fringed and underlined by the disturbing sounds of domestic violence, families arguing, babies crying - you probably know the stuff - whereas Admit It’s Killing You (And Leave) adapts that strategy to a blend of sublime, minimalist piano and cello flourishes with needling electronic interference juxtaposed with sparingly used vocal samples.

As if giving space for mediation after those two 40+ minute works, a hauntingly sustained Bonus: Admit It’s Killing You (And Leave)(Piano Solo) beautifully prompts room for reflection - more than likely leaving you devastated - before Thaemlitz adopts her Sprinkles mode for two genuinely incredible re-works, adapting the bed of strings and vocal samples in Names Have Been Changed with expressive acid bassline and feathery hi-hats in the House Arrest mix, then a ruggedly percussive, ultimately lush, dramatic and messed up Dead End version of Admit It’s Killing You.

Of course, none of this would be quite so powerful if it were heavy-handed. It’s testament to Terre’s rigorousness of thought, and grasp of both sides of the dialectic, especially when combined with her remarkable sound sensitivity and necessarily playful ambiguity, that her ideas come across as entirely balanced upon reflection, and are democratic to their core.

Unmissable. Essential. Life-affirming stuff.