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

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.

This album would be great without his obnoxious rants. I have a number of issues with the things he says but I love the music. In the end, it's just going to be a novelty item because the preaching he does is so terrible and limited. I can't even listen to most of this anymore because of the talking. He should have offered it as an instrumental and done his preaching in the liner notes. As it is, this is like Moby going off on one of his albums. Love the music, hate the decision to include his holier-than-thou ranting on top of every track.

can you elaborate on what you disagree with in terms of his rants? to me thaemlitz is speaking some serious truths.

i mean, i think you're missing the point if you just don't want them there at all, but i can understand-- it just ain't your thing.

i think the "vocal house sux" stuff in the intro is kind of eye-rolly tbh

my problem is that he sounds bitter, whether i disagree with him (the intro) or kind of agree (ball'r).

who wants a bitter house record?

Sorry to break it to you, donna, but if you look at what is being said in regards to Strictly Rhythm and whatnot, thaemlitz is right on... i mean, i love me some Todd Terry and MAW as much as the next queer, house-loving guy, but Strictly did turn towards a more commercial, filtered sound that betrayed its roots....the same thing is happening with Ibadan right now, one could argue, as is evidenced by many of Dennis Ferrer and Jerome Sydenham's recent sets....

that came out a lot more condescending than i meant it to, j03. sorry-- i just kind of agree with some of the shit that's being said, and also think that people are kind of pressing this too hard as a house record-- it really isn't a house record, imho, but an electronic treatise on house music, philosophically speaking.

anyway...

I don't want philosophy mixed in with my music. It diminishes the number of times I can enjoy the album. I'd have to listen to the album again to tell you specifically what I disagree with and it's not so much that I disagree with too many of his statements but I just don't enjoy having to hear him talk over every song (or nearly every song). I would enjoy it more if he had just written an essay and included it in the liner notes and left the album instrumental.

I really like the talky bits. I think it's kind of funny to half this pseudo academic thing grafted on to the dancing body, and I think the synthesis between what he's saying and how the music expresses it works pretty perfect. I don't really understand this thing I've realised on ILM lately that people seem to get really annoyed when some piece of music (or whatever) espouses a different opinion to theirs, as though that were some flaw in the music that the guy making it just doesn't understand or whatever. I mean fine if you think, I dunno that this record is a bit too STRICTLY VOCAL or whatevs with all the talking and just with the guy would be quiet so you can keep dancing, I mean I can respect that, but all this "I'm glad you can barely hear what he's saying because it's hella stupid" kindof annoys me for whatever reason. I guess its because I can enjoy something without necessarily agreeing with it and it seems a bit, well narrow-minded maybe?

dj sprinkles is the gay moodymann

i guess that i just don't really hear this as a house record, as i mentioned above, and thus don't really think it can be criticized in the same way as a house record.

it's clearly a house record though

and yeah, i mean, i love moodyman's rants on his records, and tend to like the rants on this record, too. i feel like it is somewhat important to have someone addressing these issues who is actually a practicing musician rather than just a critic-- so what KDJ is to Detroit and the African-American roots of house music, Thaemlitz is to New York and the polysexual roots of the New York house scene.

yeah i think TT regards this as a corrective to what he dislikes about house music in 2008 so in that sense it's def. a house record

xp

After going back through the album briefly, there aren't as many annoying spoken parts as I remembered but the Midtown Intro and the end of the Madonna thing really bother me. He was sitting at a table with the person who taught Madonna to vogue, he was outside the Loft, he was the king is his mind and he's bitter that he hasn't received the attention he thinks he deserves. I may have overstated my annoyance at the spoken bits since they don't seem to be all over every track like I had remembered but I still think this album would have a longer life if he hadn't included those statements over the music. Liner notes is the place to rant and complain about your lack of fame.

not in the same way that Ron Trent's new album is a house record, r1o--- yeah, this is more housey than "Raw through a Straw" and etc, but i find it hard to imagine people really jamming to this in a big room, with or without the vocal bits/

also I don't sense as much bitterness as most people do from this record. in a sense, i just think thaemlitz is raising the idea that a lot of popular house music is based on conceits of love, unity and togetherness, when much of the actual house music world is based on exclusion and capital. i don't necessarily agree with these ideas all the way, as i find that house music is what you want it to be, but the points that are raised are interesting sociologically and historically. that's all.

xxxps Blue is probably a pretty good soundalike actually (bigshot in any case) prefer this tho

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.