Terre Thaemlitz


Terre Thaemlitz is a musician, public speaker, and owner of the record label Comatonse Recordings. Thaemlitz's work critically combines themes of identity politics – including gender, sexuality, class, linguistics, ethnicity and race – with an ongoing critique of the socio-economics of commercial media production. This diversity of themes is matched by Thaemlitz's wide range of production styles, which include electroacoustic computer music, club-oriented deep house, digital jazz, ambient, and computer-composed neo-expressionist piano solos. Graphic design, photography, illustration, text and video also play a part in Thaemlitz's projects.

Activism

As a speaker and educator on issues of non-essentialist transgenderism and pansexual Queer sexuality, Thaemlitz has participated in panel discussions throughout Europe and Japan, as well as held numerous cross-cultural sensitivity workshops at Tokyo's Uplink Factory near Thaemlitz's current residence in Kawasaki, Japan.
Terre Thaemlitz's Soil and Tranquilizer releases in the early and mid-1990s served to introduce a "political" form of ambient music, continued in later releases such as Couture Cosmetique and Means from an End, which aim to recast the usually passive artist-listener-environment equation. Thaemlitz's colleagues in the political ambient music front include the sound activist group Ultra-red. Following their remixes of Thaemlitz's Still Life with Numerical Analysis in 1998, Ultra-red joined Thaemlitz on the German label Mille Plateaux for their first two albums: Second Nature: An Electroacoustic Pastoral and Structural Adjustments.
In 2015, Terre Thaemlitz published Nuisance, a collection of essays on identity and music. In the introduction, Thaemlitz writes, "My intention is to write in defense of pessimism, and to critically reject the incessant optimism lurking at the core of virtually all media, conferences, concerts, events and symposia – "critical media" or not."

Discography

Albums

To celebrate the 10th anniversary of Comatonse Records, Thaemlitz released a free best-of compilation CD. Physical copies are no longer in print, but MP3s are available for free through Comatonse.

Radio dramas

Italy:.::invernomuto::., 2005, Issue 3. Audio and photography.
Written, directed, filmed and edited by Terre Thaemlitz.
Originally released on VHS. In English and Japanese.
Japan: Comatonse Recordings, 2005/2003, D.001.NTSC | D.001.PAL.
Written, directed, filmed and edited by Terre Thaemlitz.
Commissioned by Lovebytes and funded by the Arts Council of England. Released with "Silent Passability" on DVD. Originally released on VHS and DVD.
Japan: Comatonse Recordings, 2005/2001, D.000.NTSC.
Written, directed, filmed and edited by Terre Thaemlitz. Released with Interstices on DVD. Originally released on VHS. Japan: Comatonse Recordings, 2005/1997, D.000.NTSC.
Directed by Iara Lee, produced by George Gund III,. Interview.
Directed by Ninon Liotet and Olivier Schulbaum,. Interview and music.
Directed by Iara Lee, produced by George Gund,. Three tracks featured on soundtrack. Sound engineering for trailer.

Awards