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" (1999) and "Structural Adjustments" (2000). 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. Internet-only releases. 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 (along with a bonus track that did not fit on the original release) through Comatonse. Italy: .::invernomuto::., 2005, Issue 3. Audio and photography. Written, directed, filmed and edited by Terre Thaemlitz. Filmography. Originally released on VHS (Japan: Comatonse Recordings, 2003, V.002). 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 (Japan: Comatonse Recordings, 2005, D.000.NTSC). Originally released on VHS (Japan: Comatonse Recordings, 2001, V.001) and DVD ("Volatile Media," UK: Lovebytes, 2002, DSP2). Japan: Comatonse Recordings, 2005/2001, D.000.NTSC. Written, directed, filmed and edited by Terre Thaemlitz. Released with "Interstices" on DVD (Japan: Comatonse Recordings, 2005, D.000.NTSC). Originally released on VHS (US: Comatonse Recordings, 1997, V.000). Japan: Comatonse Recordings, 2005/1997, D.000.NTSC. Directed by Iara Lee, produced by George Gund III, (US: Caipirinha Productions, 1998). Interview. Directed by Ninon Liotet and Olivier Schulbaum, (Germany: ZDF 2002). Interview and music. Directed by Iara Lee, produced by George Gund, (US: Caipirinha Productions , 1995). Three tracks featured on soundtrack. Sound engineering for trailer.