DJ Sprinkles - Queer blues at 120 beats per minute

“Music’s order simulates the social order, and its dissonances express marginalities.”

(Jacques Attali, “Noise: A Political Economy of Music”)

“While the development of Queer-positive imagery and graphics exploded with AIDS activism in the 1980’s, sonically we have little more than, ‘Hey-hey, ho-ho, Homophobia’s got to go!’’

(Don't Rhine)

The portrait of the artist as a young man is a mirror, the dusty reflected image of a boy gripped by psychosis. Neurosis and disorientation don't necessarily carry a nihilistic connotation; they can just as easily be the transitory condition of a dawning awareness, an illuminating realization that shifts one's sense of self into a range of possibilities bordering on the infinite.

The boy has just disavowed the faded values of small-town American middle-class life, renouncing in similar fashion the meaning and social implications attributed to the features of his face. What remains is a critical poly-identity, a reality that discovers itself at its most materialist, cross-gender, or, more precisely, de-gendered.

Ladies and gentlemen, Terre Thaemlitz.

Synthesizers, ecstasy, cosmetics

In a sense, much of all this is already implicit in the opening credits: born in 1968 in Minnesota, the boy conceals ambiguity from his very first name, Terre, its pronunciation and spelling uncertain between the English "terry", its Spanish feminine equivalent, and the French "terra".

The reluctance to conform to a reassuring, codified shape follows soon after: he's a three-year-old child when, violin in one hand, bow in the other, he bursts into tears at his father's first attempt to turn Terre into an accomplished musician. The second attempt will come a few years later, the torture device this time in the form of a trombone and the ambition to slot the youngster into the town band. These are worlds away from where Terre's gaze is already starting to turn: the spectre is synthetic and double-faced, one side romantic and vaguely futurist, located somewhere in Europe among the asexual robots of Kraftwerk, the poses of Gary Numan and the Devo-lutions, the other firmly planted in the asphalt of the here and now, breathing in the erotic fumes exhaled by disco music and the socially charged thrills of house.

A sensibility of this kind, combined with a growing interest in queer and transgender themes, could only lead to the eternal artistic eldorado: New York City.

Terre soon becomes part of the legendary transgender scene on 42nd Street, making early appearances as a self-taught DJ and selector with distinctly unorthodox tastes, mostly independent house records from New York and New Jersey, mixed in with deep house classics. Too independent, perhaps, to survive in an America of rampant globalization. Despite the esteem and popularity Terre earns within the scene (and beyond: a 1991 Grammy nomination for "best DJ act" is on the way), while also taking a political stand as a queer theorist, two names mark this story in metaphorical terms: Gloria Estefan and Walt Disney. The historic takeover of much of Times Square by the famous animation and family-friendly entertainment giant abruptly puts an end to any underground movement, with the whole area combed through by commercialization and various kinds of social "cleanup". The queer community, however battered and displaced, is anything but extinct, but the blow is absorbed quietly, on a philosophical, analytical level. Shortly after landing a prestigious gig at a famous gay club in the city, Terre is fired on the spot for flatly refusing to spin the glittering hits of Gloria Estefan, Whitney Houston and Lisa Stansfield. The cultural and economic targeting of the "pink market" had already taken place, and no one had noticed.

Given this background, it's easy to understand the weight and coherence of the intellectual foundation at the heart of every Terre Thaemlitz project, resting on the concepts of queer anti-essentialism, non-authenticity and anti-commercialization.

Terre's position on the sociological side of LGBT issues, still a controversial taboo at the time, is clear-cut and uncompromising: "Identity means social strategy. Gays and lesbians find themselves — just like straight people — reduced to their ability to consume a pre-packaged lifestyle. They're no longer discussed in relation to their subversive potential, but as a 'natural' social component assimilated into a dominant culture. The entire language of pride, with its hyper-emphasis on notions like positivity, a semi-nationalist idea of group identity, thrives on the same foundations, on deliberately ambiguous and ultimately neutral codes. Western individualist culture rejects any model of identity that has to do with flow and irresolution. We're told to find ourselves. We're told to be individuals, in a very singular sense of the term."

A process of systematic levelling that, according to Terre, spares not even ambient music, increasingly homogenized between universalist pretensions and new-age banality.

The frustration stemming from the obstacles faced as an anti-systemic DJ, together with the parallel study of electroacoustic composition techniques, finally finds a common outlet with the arrival of digital production techniques, offering a broader spectrum and easier access for those who aren't knob-fetishists.

In 1993, then, it's time to take the plunge: pouring in his meagre savings, he creates the small but long-lived label Comatonse, through which he will release many of the records under his own name.

Anyone approaching the label is greeted with a statement of intent in the form of a curious certificate of guarantee: "We guarantee you will be 100 percent satisfied with every Comatonse product or service, or we will help you define and accept your dissatisfaction in relation to the shortcomings of post-industrial consumer society."

The following year came Tranquilizer, the first and one of the happiest chapters in Thaemlitz's output, as well as the most accessible. The album's cover already spells out its intentions: a series of identical pillows, lined up neatly like mass-produced goods, except for one, caught mid-tremor and on the verge of exploding. In the background, a sky threatening a storm. Musically, the album is a fine example of electroacoustic ambient music with an experimental edge, but with a deeply evocative and hybrid soul, in which the roots are clearly identifiable (Steve Roach and Rich above all), as are the elements rooted in the here-and-now (early Aphex Twin, but also Orb and the psych-trance currents of the time). The first half of the record can be counted, without much hesitation, among the finest episodes of the era: from the "namlook-esque" intro "040468" to the splendid pairing of "Fat Chair" and "Raw Through A Straw", a minimalist sonata that spills into synthetic contortions to unleash a long jungle-ambient ecstasy, all the way to "Meditation Of The Mountain Oyster", a raga for synth and tabla, suspended between convulsions and exotic visions. The second half of the record, by contrast, freezes everything into two isolationist compositions ("A City On Springs", "2AM On A Silo", the latter a bridge toward the contemporary work of Bill Laswell), an estranging ethno-ambient interlude ("Hovering Gloves") and the rarefied melancholy of "Fina Departure", sealing a tranquilizer sui generis, bordering on addictive.

A few echoes and a certain smoothness in the production of Tranquilizer gave rise to the misconception that Terre Thaemlitz's music could be absorbed into techno-trance and chill-out room culture, distorting what was actually his real interest: turning ambient music into a discursive vehicle, a new, abstract language of protest. The first decisive step in this direction came only a year later, with the release of what remains, to this day, the absolute peak of Terre Thaemlitz's work as a composer, arranger and communicator: Soil.

If Tranquilizer could be filed, albeit with some forcing, under the techno-ambient banner, Soil cuts all ties with easy reference points and reveals itself in all its deep individuality.

The album's booklet, once again, speaks first: the storm of Tranquilizer seems to have finally broken, leaving behind, in its day-after, a sharp change of perspective. This time the focus is the earth, damp almond blossoms and moist soil harmoniously concealing a used condom. The content of Soil similarly abandons the residual escapist psychedelia and plants itself firmly in the moment, trying to compile an interpretation of reality caught in its rawest substance.

What flows through this ample hour could be summed up, in some way, as existentialist electroacoustic ambient, an impalpable, melancholic haze that envelops everything that comes within range of the observer cemented into the asphalt. Soil unfolds precisely within this special perspective, offering its necessary dose of romanticism only to regularly demolish it, forcing the listener into reflection and the renunciation of any comfortable trip: "Subjective Loss, Day 83" isolates the listening experience with a discreet drone oscillation that introduces what would become the Thaemlitz trademark, namely vocal cut-ups, bearers now of dark, anxiety-inducing omens, now of cynical political soundbites, now of reflections on queer and identity themes.

But Thaemlitz's singular meditations are not (yet) impenetrable, forbidding material: on the contrary, what makes Soil a special work even within his own discography is also its ability to retain a perversely pleasurable edge, making for a dense listen, built from structures with multiple levels of approach and meaning. The grace of "Elevatorium", an exquisitely fine isolationist melody marked in the background by chattering human crowds and concentrated mainstream radio intercepts, with a booming bassline acting as commentary, the pathos of "Trucker" and, even more so, the spectral "Yer Ass Is Grass", which bursts into an evocative classical-leaning interlude à la Lightwave, remain the most brilliant examples of the emotional potential of Terre Thaemlitz's creations. The manifesto of discursive ambient music is officially delivered.

After a collaboration with guru Bill Laswell (the album Web, 1995), Terre is busy on four different fronts. In 1997 he works with Jane Dowe on the Institutional Collaborative project, later released on disc in 1998, while also transforming into G.R.R.L. for the self-titled release, a concept record reflecting on audiences as planned and targeted by both the mainstream and alternative markets, slotting eleven tracks into various "prepackaged" styles (drum'n'bass, jungle, techno, trance, the riot grrrl strand), on the stated premise that genuine individuality can only emerge from the collision of multiple forms, of likes and dislikes — a message that, needless to say, goes well beyond strictly stylistic references.

As for the releases under his own name, 1997 saw Couture Cosmetique, an album that pulled Terre Thaemlitz even further away from strictly ambient territory to delve into more experimental and, above all, conceptual investigations. Released on the American label Caipirinha (a substantial departure, given that the two previous works came out on the Instinct Ambient imprint), Couture Cosmetique presents itself as a space in which to question the techniques of passive and active listening, overturning the idea of ambient as escapist music, as well as the genre's intrinsic gender role, which according to Terre is dominated by a hetero-male imprint. The album thus foregrounds the residual noises produced by digital synthesis techniques applied to popular music, usually relegated to the background if not entirely suppressed — a metaphor that, Thaemlitz adds, can be applied to the construction and use of post-industrial technologies in general. Technology that is also, quite evidently, synonymous with the perpetuation of Western patriarchy, in its various forms, from environmental and territorial exploitation to the reiteration of cultural control aimed at curbing social 'deviance' (genetic research into sexual orientation, gender marketing, the stereotypes of the porn market).

Couture Cosmetique presents itself as a container for these and other concerns, starting without preamble with the transphobia of "Trans AM" and the anguish of "Silent Passability (Ride To The Countryside)", for which a video was made showing a drag queen fearfully crossing an "unsafe" area. The album makes extensive use of granular synthesis, pitch convolution and filters, not sparing the typical, unsettling cut-ups, while "Abandoned Left" is probably the most chilling episode, focusing on the political frustration born of confronting the so-called "mainstream left", rendered acoustically as a digital analysis of the fade-outs of old-school jazz and r&b tracks — music as the quintessential militant, in other words.

Couture Cosmetique is a complex work, oozing personal suffering and critical passion, a tragic and necessary listen that elevates Terre Thaemlitz's music to a level not too far removed from the great politicized avant-garde provocateurs, somewhere between Walter/Wendy Carlos and Laurie Anderson.

Also in 1997, Thaemlitz launched the "Rubato" series, three volumes that reinterpret other artists' songs "pianistically" in a decidedly unconventional way. Die Roboter Rubato reworks some Kraftwerk classics, considerably slowing down their melodies (Thaemlitz had never played piano before) and shifting notes and scales until the tracks become practically unrecognizable and, in all likelihood, even more personal — an unusual tribute both to the machine-men of Düsseldorf and to Wendy Carlos. The concept of the album, which also marks Thaemlitz's arrival on Mille Plateaux, would later be followed by Replicas Rubato (1999) and Oh No! It's Rubato (2001).

Terre Thaemlitz's path would go on to probe ever more deeply into questions of identity and the "pink economy" (to which the excellent concept album Love For Sale: Taking Stock In Our Pride is dedicated, laid out in rainbow colors, with an elaborate reflection on the vampirization and flattening of the subversive potential of musical expression and queer identity), as well as research into the association of sound inputs as a means of subjective recontextualization (witness the flirtations with jazz, noise and musique concrète at extreme frequencies on Means For An End and Trans-Sister Radio), while with the more recent Soulnessless (2012), Thaemlitz would take aim at the concepts of "soul" and "authenticity" as applied to music.

Alongside all this, though, our subject also looks in directions that only seem distant at first glance, namely house music — Thaemlitz's first preferred mode of expression and a genre historically intertwined with queer themes, through which he would settle more than a few old scores.

“There must be a hundred records with voice-overs asking, ‘What is house?’ The answer is always some greeting card bullshit about ‘life, love, happiness….’ The House Nation likes to pretend clubs are an oasis from suffering, but suffering is in here with us”

Where the dancefloor stops

Terre Thaemlitz's return to the dancefloor (a world he never truly left, in truth) had already been in the air since the release of a mysterious "minimal disco" EP, Theme For The Buck Rogers Light Rope Dance (1997), credited to Chugga, but it was in 1998 that the moniker to which Thaemlitz would owe much of his popularity first appeared on record: DJ Sprinkles. Two singles released between 1998 and 2001 reopened wounds that never fully healed: the vinyl Sloppy 42nd is a passionate, bittersweet dedication to the queer scene, in particular the drag venue Sally's II, where Sprinkles was a resident DJ, later swept away by corporations and transphobia.

Years would still pass, however, before delivering a definitive, structured body of work, a form able to account for and coherently contain the tragedy, the blues, both private and social.

Surprisingly though, fresh off a recent move to Japan, in 2006 Thaemlitz reintroduced himself as K-S.H.E. (Kami-Sakunobe House Explosion), with the album Routes Not Roots, an intense work with extremely personal content (the explicit monologue of "Stand Up") following the path of the most nocturnal deep-house with refined references (Virgo Four, Fingers Inc.) and loaded with disruptive elements (nods to latin music, jazz, a cadaverous reinterpretation of "Black Is The Colour Of My True Love's Hair", in contrast with the "lived" stories being told) that converge to convey the underlying message: mutations, transformations, not the nostalgia of comfortable, backward-looking "roots".

Routes Not Roots excellently lays the groundwork for the further development of Thaemlitz's thinking, arranged in an outstanding and supremely emotional way in the masterpiece Midtown 120 Blues.

Released in 2008, Midtown 120 Blues is an almost eighty-minute discourse that restores house music to its forgotten role of giving context to frustration, sexual confusion and psychic drama. Listening to it, it's first of all impossible not to think of that "blues" cited in the title: one draws on roots to reflect on oneself, exercising feeling beyond mere contemplation. Midtown 120 Blues evokes a world that is a synthesis and account of lived experience and a yearning for the abstract, whole and immersed in its own complex historical reality. "Ball'r-Madonna-Free Zone" mimics the struggles of minorities ("If anybody requested 'Vogue' or any other Madonna track, I told them, 'No, this is a Madonna-free zone'! And as long as I'm DJ-ing, you will not be allowed to vogue to the decontextualized, reified, corporatized, liberalized, neutralized, asexualized, re-genderized pop reflection of this dance floor's reality!").

"Brenda's $20 Dilemma" weaves an opiate jazz-trip, where torment and exaltation stir restlessly within a person and churn like volcanoes under the skin, derailing between calls and temptations, cries and incitements (the title track, the two "Grand Central"s...).

Loop, micro-instrumental insertions and functional sampling influence the artificial organism, completing it, supplying its vital breath, dissolving its support into a pure, total emotional state. Passing, with complete naturalness, from simple, banal artistic reproduction to the gradual assimilation of colours, tones, scents, the texture of matter.

The result, enormous, unexpected, is a device that drips life in luminescent nostalgic drapery and decadent fascinations. A dream of infinity in which to flee, atone, rest. A limbo of mottled naturalism that soothes and absolves the abyss of suffering.

Midtown 120 Blues is more than an artistic summa, it radiates an iconic imagery in perfect attraction with the vivid, ostentatious expressiveness of the painting on the cover. An ellipsis between mystery and revelation: just as much as the music, those dense, opaque brushstrokes captivate, enveloping and burning the listener within their own intimate emotional whirlwind.

Embraced enthusiastically by much of the critics, Midtown 120 Blues boosted Terre Thaemlitz's renown like never before, multiplying articles and interviews dedicated to her (even actual lectures on philosophy and gender theory) and above all the fame of the name "Sprinkles" as a guarantee of quality within house production.

It is precisely on remixes that Sprinkles' activity focuses in the following five years. An aesthetic, that of remixes and versions, which offers Terre the chance to latch onto another favourite theme, the critique of the concept of authenticity. Criticizing the established mechanism that, in music, establishes the notion of ownership as the only existing and acceptable association between the artist and the musical product — also known as authorship, on which the idea of copyright is directly founded — Thaemlitz puts forward an image of music and musician as unbound, as a creator of symbolic connections and reference points at the service of further reshapings of identity and meaning, carrying forward not patriarchal individualities but open discursive flows.

With an immediate metaphorical leap, Thaemlitz's observations once again extol the use, or rather the culture, of the sample, and with another, more imaginative leap, shift back into gender theory, her field of historical study, as she likes to think of the assembly of her transgender identity in the same way she carves out grooves and samples.

Even in light of all this, confining a work like Queerifications And Ruins (like the recent, if less ambitious, mixtape Where Dancefloors Stand Still) to the realm of the simple remix seems limiting, if not outright wrong.

Spread across two discs, Queerifications And Ruins draws from 13 contemporary house repertoires, ranging from the sensual smoothness of Matt Tolfrey to the overwhelming Italian trance of Marco Bernardi, stripping away their heavy aura and handing them back transformed as a single compact whole. As in Where Dancefloors Stand Still, what returns first are the persistent echoes of Fingers Inc. (hear the double "Lost Area"), unsurpassed icon of the genre, in open, constant dialogue with Thaemlitz's other "soul", the ambient one. The interplay proceeds on superb levels throughout the first half of the collection, probably reaching its peak in the gripping pairing of "Klinsfrar Melodie" and "Motorik Life", which comes close to brushing progressive–house territory, not far from the insights of the masterpiece Midtown 120 Blues, nocturnal and profoundly deep.

After an existential monologue recited by Terre herself (tacked onto the more ambient "Seashore"), the second half of the work opens up. This time the reference names are Parallax Beat Brothers, Kuniyuki and Ducktails, the tones become more hushed, more in line with the deep sinuousness in which Thaemlitz proves once again to be among the undisputed authorities. Here too, though, unpredictability and genius become the key variable: narrowly skirting the risk of background club music, "Bourbon Skies" reintroduces fascinating "blues" colours, while "A Little Beat" unleashes a pitch-black techno-like suite, toward the end of the night, toward the end of the world, as per the subtitle.

Terre Thaemlitz reaffirms the enormous ability, extremely rare among her contemporaries, to communicate with the most tragic and hyper-materialist side of things, using an emotional, romantic language. Deeply intellectual music at the service of the senses, it probes beneath the false guise of reality, the frills and collective representations, exposing what remains beneath the thick crust: queerifications and ruins.

Contributions by Fabio Russo

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