Strictly 4 My Underground Homo Deep House Thugs: DJ Sprinkles - Midtown 120 Blues

I've said it before.. Thaemlitz is gifted. One of the few artists where the whole discography is essential. Glad to see Mule is getting his work wider appeal, the earlier Mille Plateaux and his own Comatonse output is wonderful too.

this is dope thnx tim!!

LWE has a review of this up now: http://www.littlewhiteearbuds.com/dj-sprinkles-midtown-120-blues/

Very, very good. Reminds me of both Silentintroduction and Pansoul. Check it out...

awful gay, political deep house music.

seriously though, pretty good in places. House Music Is Controllable Desire You Can Own is a jam.

this is dope thnx tim!!

― deej, Saturday, November 29, 2008 6:41 PM (2 weeks ago) Bookmark

also good: that song hush now which is on some compilation

It's available for free on Terre Thaemlitz's home page.

http://www.ultrared.org/publicrecord/archive/2-04/2-04-001/2-04-001-01.mp3

What I like is the way it loops 'hush now' at first and then 'silence = death' towards the end playing one off against the other. Again, as with the DJ Sprinkles record, the concept explained sounds laboured and like it's going to be dreadful listening, despite the worthiness of the concept, but the execution is so flawless that it works. I guess it reminds me of Matmos in this. The concepts always had the potential to make for dull music but they were never second to the sound.

thakig u tim

can't wait to hear this. i picked up the you again? comp earlier this year and it is ace (i don't know about "peaking into the mind of god" ace, but v good nonetheless)

also, search "class" (loco dice remix) by social material (another TT alias)

this sounds good

I should probably listen to this.

Also, RE: Madonna's "Vogue" - that song has always bothered me, particularly the bridge when she starts rattling off all of these icons of beauty and they're all white. I mean, "Rita Hayworth gave good face"? Really? :| Anyway, I read a piece on this by Essex Hemphill that was great, let me see if I can find.

Rita Hayworth was half Spanish.

HOOS is mexican btw

the criticism is not that all the people mentioned in vogue are white, it's more about the lyrics "It makes no difference if you're black or white
If you're a boy or a girl".

what thaemlitz is clearly having a go at is the appropriation of a gay/black/latino artform by madonna. To then tell these people that these things which they identify themselves with don't matter could be seen as a bit of a kick in the teeth.

great album though, i dismissed his ouput and a lot of force/mille stuff cos i was a grumpy litlle techno/idm fella, really up for revisiting

Rita Hayworth was half Spanish.

― Kevin John Bozelka, Thursday, 18 December 2008 21:03 (28 minutes ago)

Errr... what is your point.

Anyway, here is the Hemphill criticism I was talking about, I had to type it up since I couldn't find it online but it's from a piece entitled "To Be Real":

...But from Madonna, the legendary "material girl," the raider, the plunderer, you will never hear acknowledgment of the fact that voguing grew out of Black and Puerto Rican gay ball communities.
Her "Vogue" song, a commercial hit, was an insult to these communities because the litany of names she calls in the song as representative of the style and attitude deliberately excludes Blacks and Puerto Ricans. Obviously Madonna must believe that Blacks and Puerto Ricans have contributed nothing to the theater of style and attitude originating in this country, since names like Josephine Baker, Dorothy Dandridge, and Celia Cruz are conspicuously absent from her list of the beautiful ones.
Black gay British filmmaker Isaac Julien raised an important issue regarding Black art and culture... he said, "I'm more interested in questions concerning the commodification of Black art and culture. I think questions such as commodification provide a more realistic analysis and critique of Black art as we approach the end of the twentieth century." Not only are questions of commodification more critical then we may yet realize, but urgent questions about American and Western cultural appropriations of those it despises, marginalizes, and disempowers also emerge from the interrogation Julien suggests.

Also, bell hooks has some interesting criticisms RE: racial politics & Madonna. I think it's a pretty interesting topic of discussion, even though it doesn't stop me from enjoying her music.

not bad

This fucking album. I'm 3 minutes in and just, yeah. . .

It's good to know that Ball'r, first heard last year, is probably going to be still at least top 5 of 09 at the end of the year.

So completely rules my best of 2009 already after half a day of constant listening !

so yeah this is really beautiful

this grew on me in a big way. grand central part one! it's extremely referential, which is usually annoying, but it just works.

Huh? @ gays being offended by "Vogue," which is like the gayest song Madonna's ever done (the whole "Stroke a pose" thing). I'd think they'd be more pissed at, say, "La Isla Bonita" ("...where a GIRL loves a BOY and a BOY loves a GIRL.")

not getting it

ignore the tracks with the spoken word and just check out the endless hall/house of mirrors

got this on CD in japan at tower this summer and I've been digging it too, it's pretty classic terre stuff, I think, reminds me of other comatonse things

the sample from shadows and fog on "grand central station pt. ii" is so excellently deployed

Lol "stroke a pose"

been meaning to check this out but been wary because his old ambient house stuff sucks so bad. i love "lovebomb" and "couture cosmetique" and dig "means to an end" but this guy crawled so far up his own asshole intellectually that it's hard for me to think he could let it all go and get into a deep house thing. but tim f's description at the top makes it sound pretty successful.

i know there's a main thaemlitz thread around here but let me just say that the 2nd track of lovebomb, where he autotunes some revolutionary radio propaganda broadcast to minnie riperton's "loving you" needs to be put in the smithsonian or something

Leaving aside the monologues (mostly mixed very low so you can ignore them if you want to) there's actually something oddly... anonymous about this album?

Which I don't mean as a diss, more like: in spite of all the conceptual baggage that attaches to thaemlitz generally and this album specifically, the music itself is really just trying to be the best of its type, the kind of thing any house producer would be really really proud of having made.

Which is my roundabout way of saying i think you'd like it notwithstanding your concerns, winston.

omg haha

When Madonna came out with her hit "Vogue" you knew it was over. She had taken a very specifically queer, transgendered, Latino and African-American phenomenon and totally erased that context with her lyrics, "It makes no difference if you're black or white, if you're a boy or a girl." Madonna was taking in tons of money, while the Queen who actually taught her how to vogue sat before me in the club, strung out, depressed and broke. So 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!"

it's good that it's mixed so low

i'm fine with the lyrics applied in madonna's case but it's always been specifically the case of the pop star voguing and the homos on the side as back up dancers for it (continuing to this day re: beyonce, lady gaga) that just seems off and awkward

the sample from shadows and fog on "grand central station pt. ii" is so excellently deployed

― susan fassbender (donna rouge), Friday, 26 June 2009 02:24 (Yesterday)

More info on this please.

when I see him out there, in his make-up, getting knocked around and falling in a big tub of water with all the people laughing, I can only think "he must have suffered so to act like that"

"it's good that it's mixed so low"

yeah but the whole album is mixed that way, on purpose so say the liner notes. it's amazing that it doesn't turn into complete sludge. i haven't heard anything from 2009 that sounds like this, although i might put it into the whole "aquatic" faction of dance music (maybe political non-fiction to drexciya's sci-fi and chain reaction's stalagmitic explorations. maybe.).

fuck, i'm scaring myself now by thinking "what if I'd never come across this album...."

aamazingly, in the same week that i picked this up, also got Round Two - "New Day" , which I'd completely missed out on. Fuuuucccccck! Goosebumps, within 5 seconds.

i'll co-sign on this album. easily among my favorite full-length bobbins of 2009, even if it did come out in 08

I've read that Terre Thaemlitz made this as a reaction/reflection to the current/a recent deephouse revival. Have I missed this? Without derailing this thread too much, what's been going on that's worth checking (all I seem to hear my way in revival terms was disco and prog/kraut influences for the last 12 months)

Oh, the MCDE (Motor City Drum Ensemble) mixes of "Grand Central Part 1 (Deep Into The Bowel of House) are killer also, especially the "Raw mix"

Might be worth noting that there's a letter from Terre Thaemlitz in the July issue of Harper's - about Catholic ROTC military academies.

can you c+p for nonsubscribers?

didn't know i was logged in! here:

Jeff Sharlet’s opening tale of how the U.S. military managed to provoke the household guns of an entire Muslim community with the slogan “Jesus Killed Mohammed” was a choice example of how easily American democratic ideals can be tainted by faith-infused nationalism, resulting in childish vandalism and bizarre pranks. This dynamic extends past the conflict described by Sharlet to another religious community that militarized under cultural pressure: American Catholics.

The spread of Catholic ROTC military prep academies in the United States (which is not paralleled in Europe) goes back to World War I and was the result of Catholic immigrants (particularly Germans and Italians) attempting to prove their loyalty to their new, largely Protestant homeland. My father attended this kind of Catholic academy during World War II, then went on to teach at several such institutions as a Dominican brother until he was dismissed in the 1970s for voicing his opposition to the Vietnam War. As a child, I found it impossible to reconcile the “Thou shall not kill” tenet of his faith with his lifelong immersion in military prep–particularly since he had never expressed any interest in entering the military himself.

During a recent visit home, I found a letter he had received in the early 1940s from the headmaster of his former high school, instructing all Catholic boys to approach the draft board with tremendous enthusiasm for the fight at hand, and with a request for placement within a Catholic academy for military training (as opposed to a training assignment elsewhere). The unintended subtext of this letter was that a Catholic ROTC could protect you from the draft: boys who entered the academy also had the option of becoming clergymen. But requesting to be trained at a Catholic academy did not mean you would necessarily be sent to one. How many boys who followed the letter’s instructions found themselves swept onto battlefields sooner than they might have been otherwise?

Raised as a “graven idol-worshipping Catholic” in Springfield, Missouri–headquarters of the Assembly of God church mentioned by Sharlet—I can already imagine evangelicals citing this letter as further proof of the need to treat Catholics with mistrust. As Sharlet’s reporting reminds us, suspicion of the Other is eternal.

Terre Thaemlitz
Kawasaki, Japan

cool thanks, i was hoping he'd put it on the comatonse website but he hadn't

"The Occasional Feel-Good" is such a great payoff.

This is pretty lush. I want a real copy. Where in the UK?

House Music Is Controllable reminds me of (early) Bark Psychosis; if they'd made a record straight after Blue and gone total house.

i think juno has it

nice to know that other homo deep house thugs read Harper's. had a subscription since i was 17, eight years on and i'm still rockin it.

Took the plunge, ticket bought!

Great! The Berkeley has an upstairs bar and sit down area which is pretty chill.

I think Mr and Mrs Arika might be going too?

Yeah, it would be nice to see them too if they are. I'll drop them a line.

So who's up for this? Me and fellow ilxor MrAndyM are heading along

I'm still in.

The clips of this are sounding good - https://boomkat.com/products/purple-blue-long-trax-ep-1

45 Minute doublepack featuring some of the most engrossing House music you'll likely hear this year or any other - First in a series of three releases pairing original material by Will Long with DJ Sprinkles’ overdubs.

Tokyo, Japan-based American artists, Will Long and DJ Sprinkles, present sublime, durational deep house studies examining the dancefloor in light of contemporary socio-political inequalities and failed illusions of ‘Revolution’ and ‘Progression’.

It begins a series of three vinyl sets and eventually a 2CD package that effectively compare deep house’s original, economical aesthetics and function as the soundtrack to marginalised society, with its current position; repackaging and overproducing the same old ideas with empty sloganeering, operating as the catalyst of social trends, rather than an agent of social transformation.

They both make their point subtly but clearly. Two sides feature extended 10+ minute tracks by Will Long, created using relatively minimal means of rhythm composer percussion, polyphonic synth chords, and rack sampler vocals, while the other two sides provide overdub Sprinkles versions.

The beautifully absorbing results - which sound miles away from Long’s gentler ambient and experimental work - prove that it is possible to elicit subtle yet optimal responses with a well-selected palette of grooves and samples, in this case from Jesse Jackson and Rap Brown, rather than current vogue for showmanship and more-as-more arrangements.

DJ Sprinkles' overdubbed contributions quite literally and psycho-acoustically resonate that intention, tactfully rending a farther, lush physicality and soulfulness thru deftly applied daubs of glutinous subbass pressure, airy strings and subtly shimmering FX, really offsetting Long's trax in a whole other dimension; and via disciplined, stripped-down, full-bodied production values that rank as perhaps the deepest yet in Sprinkles’ already perfectly formed canon.

They could be taken as a call for humbleness and meditative efficiency over cliched buildups and preening vanities, perhaps a comment on “deep" house as the equivalent of a fresh tattoo or sweatshop t-shirt slogan.

Because, you know, it really does stand for a lot more.

Is that Celer's Will Long? Excited for this!

hnng

Mine arrived this morning. Gorgeous. The two Will Long tracks - "Time Has Come" (with a sampled fragment of Jesse Jackson) and "Chumps" (with a sampled fragment of Rap Brown) - are sparse and elemental, very much in the Sprinkles ballpark. Each track is embellished by Sprinkles on the flip, with customarily astonishing sonic range - enveloping sub-bass and parts that somehow sound 3D - which does kind of justify the continued digital refusenik stance. ("Protect the minor - do not upload" on the label.)

Mine arrived this morning. Gorgeous. The two Will Long tracks - "Time Has Come" (with a sampled fragment of Jesse Jackson) and "Chumps" (with a sampled fragment of Rap Brown) - are sparse and elemental, very much in the Sprinkles ballpark. Each track is embellished by Sprinkles on the flip, with customarily astonishing sonic range - enveloping sub-bass and parts that somehow sound 3D - which does kind of justify the continued digital refusenik stance. ("Protect the minor - do not upload" on the label.)

i like sprinkles but that press release is one of the worst i've ever read

Both of these EPs are absolutely gorgeous

xp I really like Boomkat's gushing, over the top Pseuds Corner style write ups. Essential purchase!

Can't wait for the 2cd release.

to be honest I didn't enjoy listening to the two EPs. All of the Sprinkles stuff is well done but it's too repetitive to listen to for an hour-plus, and the source material is a bit boring. The Simon Fisher Turner thing was perfect in its construction and duration and left me wanting more... but now it's here and it's too much.

So, how do people rate Skylax House Explosion, the new 2-disc DJ mix by Sprinkles and Hardrock Striker? I think it's pretty dope, a nice, kicking mix of straightforward deep house. I'm not really familiar with Skylax as a label, but the selection here is pretty awesome. I especially love the Lady Blacktronika track on Sprinkles' disc, with that wonderful choppy piano riff!

The Lady Blacktronika album last year was pretty awesome

has anyone heard the new 'deproduction' eps?
'Sprinkles' House Arrest' is probably the most beautiful & haunting piece of music I heard this year.

if i had my shit together i'd definitely be collecting everything she does

Read this review this AM and have been running through this excellent spotify playlist since.

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/dj-sprinkles-gayest-tits-and-greyest-shits-1998-2017-12-inches-and-one-offs/

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5z8OEJXDqczRgZ6gTUuyUz

yes https://ra.co/news/75568?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

awesome. more excited about TT the lecturer / theorist than TT the artist these days tbh so very much looking forward to this.

https://toneglow.substack.com/p/tone-glow-069-terre-thaemlitz

loved this interview

idk. i don't mean to be contrarian but i thought that was one of the worst pieces i've seen with her involved. just when it started to get interesting the interviewer sort of chickened out. once he cuts down all the usual stuff and gets to his goal, which is to minimalize violence. i would want to hear someone question him on that. i just have questions about what that means and i see contradictions in what he's saying. i find it interesting that agency is an illusion except when it comes to not causing harm. if violence is everywhere, it seems like .. a fantasy? whereas the reality might be that violence should be responsibly engaged with, whatever that means. of course i like his materialist pov and find it refreshing but i've discovered that spirituality or drugs or meditation or pleasure or power are not lazy and bad things to want, they are reasons to keep living, and one can take part in some of those things without being too much of a douchebag. in fact it's probably healthiest to do so (at least for me).

her apartment looks lovely.

also think it's worth challenging terre when he drops "cancel culture" like twice over the course of an interview, like for someone who is a very contextual thinker within her particular focus to say that, it rankles 4 me, just sayin

also, the bit about authenticity not existing. i mean i get what she's saying, but ... i can't deny the sort of reaction i experience when i hear certain rooted sounds, when they're close to some kind of folk tradition. like obviously human societies of all kinds have been a nightmare but i'm tired of questioning / denying the inner hum / spiritual reaction i get from music. granted all kinds of horrible exploitative and violent practices hinge on that. but ultimately it's why i'm still alive and why i'm going to keep on living, so i'm focusing on that energy rather than putting up purity tests for everything (spoiler alert: everything will fail).

xp yeah that stood out.

i mean i always find terre interviews alternately edifying and annoying, nothing new for me, maybe this is unfair of me but her straight edgeness extends to her thinking, so even when i'm on the same page as her 100 percent i sort of simultaneously disagree with the inflexibility? not that her thinking isn't flexible, obviously it flexes a lot within its particularly context, but it can still like... flatten other subjects for which that kind of thinking isn't entirely appropriate. not sure if i'm making sense

yes that makes a lot of sense

like it's alternatively nuanced and then just very black-and-white. straight edgeness is a good way to describe it. i thought it was funny when she was talking about how she realizes how american she still is - like, that curmudgeonly midwesterness is very much still there.

and like i get an albini vibe from her sometimes, lol, she would probably be amused to hear that.

I did roll my eyes at the LGBTGDGMROGMROGONFMwhatever joke she was trying to make. But I love that he is willing to say, fuck heteronormativity if it isn't for you, I need more of that in my life

yeah totally, his positions are often extremely righteous and i love reading them

my favorite one is his evisceration of family, that has really stuck with me.

I’d have liked the interviewer to drill down further into the seeming contradiction between: gigs are bad, because a communal response destroys the individual’s singular connection to the art vs: being a DJ, which is surely all about eliciting a communal response (even if you’re as anti-fun as TT!)

Relistening for the first time in years… god I love how MOODY this record is. It truly needs to be played LOUD so you can immerse yourself in all its MOODINESS.

When I first heard it Brenda’s $20 Dilemma didn’t stand out to me much, but listening now — man, it creates such an *atmosphere* in those eight or so minutes. A low key highlight for sure

Whats the sample in The Occasional Feel-Good? I felt like it almost came to me recently. Or maybe what came to me was The Occasional Feel-Good itself

Don't know about that, but I'm pretty sure the sample in "House Music is Controllable Desire You Can Own" is "I Know You" by Paul Williams.

god I love how MOODY this record is. It truly needs to be played LOUD so you can immerse yourself in all its MOODINESS.

cosign

Also has anyone heard the Gayest Tits complication she put out a couple years ago? Haven’t seen much discussion about it here but seems like the kind of thing y’all would like

I bought it. It's wonderful. Spent a long weekend in Palm Springs last year with only this set for music in the car. Perfectly stenciled the visit into my brain - very scenic music. The Will Long CD (Long Trax) it came with is also lovely. Hours and hours of spacy, chugging warmth.