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

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

I do kinda like the "fuck you, it does matter if you're black or white, it just doesn't matter to you because you're on the right side" attitude a little bit, but the losing my edge for the paris is burning brigade angle rubs me the wrong way too.

Sisters, I don't know what this world is coming to sounds like water coming down a staircase btw

table is sorta right tho, you can't really dance to this I mean

Sisters, I don't know what this world is coming to sounds like water coming down a staircase btw

this track is so amazing

thats my fav track

yeah frankly i dont know how u can really get like offended by what hes saying here, i dont agree w/ all of it// its not my worldview but then i listen to rap so im used to this sort of thing.

i think that the spoken bits really make sense to the album & i def cant imagine the album without them -- that would be weird

'this sort of thing' being 'views i dont actually agree with' not inferring that TT's views here are even close to the level of 'offensive' some rappers are

can someone recommend me some more faggy jazz echoey piano music that you know of while we're at it.

I'm listening to Drive-By by The Necks right now which ALMOST fits the "faggy jazz echoey piano music" description to a T.

In that it's literally (1 60-minute piece of) echoey piano jazz with an amazing groove.

checking it out!

not to be jerk, but you can get that entire Necks track here: http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?z0mzbe1ujwq .

i also highly rate it.

lol at "yes just one track"

One of my very favourite albums / tracks of the decade, without a shadow of a doubt.

Back when I ran the library film & music department and we'd play music, this was the single piece of music that garnered the most "wow, what's this, where can I get it" comments from both students and academics. Everyone loved it.

^^^bolsters my theory that Drive-by aurally (orally?) simulates (stimulates?) a good round of the sex...

It gets really spacey about 20 minutes in

Their debut album was called Sex as I recall.

i 4got this album existed

i don't hate it by any means but it's not all that, really now

. 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 don't necessarily agree with this, and also, even if Terre is bitter then so what? I'll afford his the right to be if that's what he wants to put out (not to mention this is a very personal document, there's autobiography in the arguments and vice versa).

Am I the only one that thinks putting essays in liner notes is more pretentious/annoying than putting it in the music. It seems more. . . underhanded (that's not the right word but I can't think of the correct one)

And yeah, this album is all that.

if you're making a record with a 'message' these days, when the music itself is being increasingly disassociated from the physical medium, you're probably not going to get the message across with sleevenotes.

he'll also release a 30 hours piano solo as mp3 (on a data DVD). and only 30h because of FAT32 limitation.
Midtown 120 Blues is gorgeous btw.

no idea what this sounds like but i just love the title of the thread.

"To preserve the dynamic range of the original recordings this album was mastered without compression and is intentionally quieter than some. Turn up your stereo volume for best playback."

And indeed it does sound AWESOME when pumped loud through a pair of B&W 685s with a meaty amplifier. It's about space and depth and sensuality.

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.