2xCD Comatonse Recordings (USA) 2000

Handsomely packaged collection of some of Terre's 12" releases, plus a bonus disc holding a 57-minute jam recorded in Taiwan. Some of my favorite work from Terre is his vinyl-only material released on his own Comatonse label. This selection of tracks from various 12"s dating back to 1993 is a good introduction to the more beat oriented side of Terre's work. And an introduction is all it is, since at 8 tracks out of a back catalogue of 4 12"s and one CD this is at least half as long as it could have been. Terre's take on deep house is highly idiosyncratic - they bounce deeply enough, but their sequences progress with the same abstract logic heard in Terre's ambient/noisy material such as "Means From An End" or "Couture Cosmetique". The Chugga remix still sounds as "wrong" as it did on vinyl (at any speed) - electronic disco bleeps dance over Terre's trademark echoed piano runs that begin in Liberace territory and end in Henry Cowell's. Those piano touches liven up the unreleased track "Class", taken from a forthcoming 12", which offers a slightly more "breakbeat" rhythm than the customary deep house thud. The other unreleased track from Terre's Neu Wuss Fusion is a loungy ditty with harpsichord-like keys and a tinkling little rhythm that sounds a little Brazilian, or maybe just like the opening of Blondie's "Heart of Glass". After that track, the following tracks - 8 through 82 are all 4 seconds each of near silence. Skip that and go on to the last piece, a bass loop and piano exploration of the more ambient side of Terre's Comatonse sound. Disc two contains one 57-minute piece - "Superbonus" a previously unreleased track by Funk Shui, Terre's "fusion" ensemble featuring him on keyboards and electronics plus a Taiwanese jazz group on bass, dulcimer, keys and snares. This track is an anomaly in Terre's discography, being very similar to the work of Australian ambient/minimal jazz trio The Necks - endlessly building bass and drum patterns played over deep ambient echoes and distant melodic piano filigree. The drummer's gait is a little less metronomic that The Neck's beat keeper, but otherwise the same delicate and dubbed out atmosphere pervades.