One of the aspects of producing solipsistic NATION that I really enjoy is that it gives me the opportunity to talk to people in the electronic music community that in other circumstances I would never get the chance to talk to. I’ve gotten to talk with folks like Amon Tobin, Jack Dangers and Cheb i Sabbah, for example. How cool is that? I have to admit that with some of these people I do get kind of starstruck but once I get past that it’s interesting to have a conversation with these artists about how they approach their craft.
On today’s show were going to talk with Terre Thaemlitz. Terre is an award-winning multi-media producer, writer, public speaker, educator, audio remixer, DJ and founder of Comatonse Recordings.
Terre works in many different styles: electroacoustic computer music, club-oriented deep house, digital jazz, ambient, and computer-composed neo-expressionist piano solos. His work also explores the themes of identity politics such as gender, sexuality, class, linguistics, ethnicity and race, and the socio-economics of commercial media production.
Terre recently released his Dead Stock Archive, a collection of every audio release he has made under his real name or under his many aliases. Originally I planned was to play selected tracks from his archive but Terre pointed out that the archive has over 60 hours of music and that maybe I should play his ambient/jazz piece, “Superbonus.” While “Superbonus” does not convey the scope and breadth of Terre’s career it is a beautiful piece of music and provides an example of his many styles he is capable of. What’s remarkable is that while “Superbonus” may, in some ways, evoke Miles Davis’s classic album, In A Silent Way, “Superbonus” was composed entirely n a computer.
Terre’s a very thoughtful person had many insightful things to say. Unfortunately I had to edit our conversation considerably to fit the time constraints of the show. Fortunately, however, I’m making the unedited version of that interview as a separate download. Think of it as a bonus feature that you might find on a movie DVD.
- Funk Shui with Terre Thaemlitz “Superbonus”
- Interview with Terre Thaemlitz