- Terre Thaemlitz has always been a fascinating character for his outspokenness on social, gender and sexual issues (check his website for a taste) and more obviously for his transexuality and his ability to change identities. Importantly, this drive for individuality has also taken his music into widespread and often uncharted territories, including electro-acoustic composition, deep house, jazz, ambient and more under a battery of monikers. This remix EP is no exception to this diversity. Both sides are completely dissimilar yet both draw from the same source material, the ‘She’s Hard’ single released on Thaemlitz’s own Comatonse label back in 1998.
The A-side is a blissed out ambient track perfect for coming down, while the flip is a deep house killer for coming up. Made in Japan, Thaemlitz’s latest home of residence, it arrives on Tokyo label Mule Musiq, whose Mule Electronic imprint published his acclaimed triptych of You? Again? remixes last year. The ambient Archive of Silence mix seems to be another live rendition, this time recorded at the Acropolis. The electric flute from the original hovers over floating organ drones and chimes that breathe in and out reassuringly, but the drift of vocals towards the end is perhaps the cut's most signature moment: it's an excerpt from the Ultra Red collection of samples and silences relating to AIDS activism, an indication of Thaemlitz's political commitment.
Playhouse’s Max Mohr remix immediately breaks with the tranquility, however, injecting a insistent bass riff into the same organ drone and then layering a matrix of new and familiar samples over the top, including very beautiful flutes and chimes. The ebb and flow of the track is as complex as the selfless bliss of the A-side, gaining and losing density and pressure to maintain a steady dancefloor momentum.
Two beautiful works and plenty more to contemplate along with it.
TracklistA 2007 Archive Of Silence Mix
B Max Mohr Remix