Triple LP Gatefold Vinyl
30th anniversary edition of Terre Thaemlitz' fabled second album, now on vinyl for the first time. The political dimensions of Thaemlitz' music have been increasingly recognised in recent years, and they certainly have a huge bearing on Soil, uniquely reframing an understanding of a genre that's more often tasteful, lifestyle-orientated and, at its worst, anodyne, rather than ideological. In fact, categorising these six tracks as solely 'ambient' - a "movement", as Theaemlitz calls it, that they were already deeply critical of - feels like a broad simplification. There are narratives being pursued here - about domestic violence, American gun laws, late stage capitalism - presented through a complex prism of spoken word samples, neo-classical arrangements, environmental recordings, various clicks+cuts, and vaporous drone in ways that are both instantly affecting and continually rewarding over repeat listens. Undoubtedly beautiful music, but not in the precious ways you might associate with lesser voices operating in the same space. This is instead beauty as power, as feeling, as radical act, dismantling the privileged contradictions at the centre of ambient music production. Terre Thaemlitz brings agency to a sound that's often otherwise anonymous, the echoes of which you might hear in, say, the mid period output of Burial (e.g 'Rival Dealer', 'Come Down To Us') or the narrative-driven expressions of claire rousay. Pivotal and undeniably crucial.
FFO: William Basinski, Donato Dozzy, Gas, Oval, Global Electronic Network
