From Sean Cooper Sent Thu, Jun 4th 1998, 19:07
From Sean Cooper Sent Thu, Jun 4th 1998, 19:07
> The point that people like Thaemlitz seem to chronically miss is that > no matter how long you puke up so-called meanings, there is no way you can > guarantee they'll transliterate to the minds of those who ingest what you > do. hence the liner notes. > You use the term > "leftist" as though it were a nation or a religion. It requires no proper > status and is but an indicator of where one stands on a political/social > scale. The end of that sentence is complete unintelligible thin air. terre's background previous to his focusing on music is in political agitation, primarily in the context of marginalized sexual identities (queer nation et al). one of the major struggles organizations such as queer nation have had to grapple with is the question of the utility of leftist political strategies dating from the 1960s and the necessity of adjusting those strategies to the political and cultural realities of postindustrial late capitalism. terre's frustrations with "leftism" lay precisely in its "religious" tendencies; that is (and primarily in the context of identity politics) the necessity of concretizing social identities in the interest of political struggle when it is precisely the notion of stable, concrete social identity that that struggle seeks to problematize. what makes these tendencies religious is their lean toward universalizing notions of subjectivity, freedom, natural rights, etc. terre explores these themes in his music in the ways he describes in his liner notes. he does not expect listeners to be able to hear the exploration of these themes in the music (again, that's why he includes the discussion of them in the liner notes), nor does he believe acceptance or cognition of those ideas is necessary to the enjoyment of the music. he includes them as supplements to the music in the interest of those who may also wish to explore them. if you're not one of those people, i think it's probably his assumption that you would simply not read them. > Anyway, it wouldn't matter if the track was composed of samples of > Thaemlitz farting on the toilet over a span of two months. No > unrecognizable sound will "exemplify" anything. As if we, the audience > sits here, listens, and come collectively to the realization : "Hey! > There's the end of Sly and the Family Stone! Dang, have I been overly > heterosexist lately?" Thaemlitz had to actually explain the song's > construction to support the invented meaning! This is piteously phony. one of the things that is so remarkable about terre's music is that he *does*, in fact, explore these things in the actual content of his music--both in terms of the sounds that he uses (such as the fade-outs you referred to above), as well as the production techniques to which those sounds are exposed. these are not meanings superadded to the tracks after they've already been produced, as you've asserted in your criticisms of his liner notes; they are the actual parameters that he sets up in order to produce the track in the first place. much as grafitti has been described by some writers as the sort of "surface effect" of a physical exchange between the artist and the wall, terre's music is a byproduct of the fabrication of sound manipulation and production techniques and technologies which literalize the themes he writes about in the liner notes. for a deeper discussion of this, see: http://www.urbansounds.com/home/styles/ambient/us_ambient_thaemlitzmeans.html and http://www.urbansounds.com/archives/us_dec_97/us_ambient_thaemlitz.html > I hear so many "artists" say things so similar to this that it's making me > question the point of creating at all. What ever became of making things > because one felt compelled to make them? i don't understand where compulsion is lacking in terre's music. if anything, it's stronger and far more focused than with most people churning out tracks in their bedrooms because they're otherwise bored or have too many drugs lying around or whatever...are you suggesting the creative process is the revelation of some sort of "deep structure" of human consciousness and that terre's methods somehow cloud or corrupt the revelatory process? i don't think you are--the new age connotations of this perspective seem at odds with the egotism and general vitriol of your original post--but that's sort of where your thinking leads. > As an artist and as a fan of this form of music I am completely repelled > by this bullshit Thaemlitz peddles in his liner notes. The only thing > that keeps me buying his music is that I like the way it sounds. (Oh, > well...that's reality...) :) well then, i guess the only response is that the last laugh is, in fact, his. > I know I'll probably get a few nasty mails about this rant, but that's all > well and good. The louder folks yell, the more I know the truth's sinking > in. if only this were true...if only. sc onnow: fennesz : hotel paral.lel (mego)