Album Protests Prigs & Prudes Accompanying Assimilation

Compiled By GayToday

'Love for Sale - Taking Stock in Our Pride' (Mille Plateaux Queer Media Series #1) takes an Electro-acoustique look, say its fans, "at the mainstreaming of Lesbian and Gay identities in the U.S. through their transformation in recent years into viable market economies."

Music writer/ performer Terre Thaemlitz associates "this economic evolution with a political shift in Queer communities away from the direct action of the '80s toward a contemporary politic emphasizing representation and legislation -- the result of which is a silencing of 'sexual radicality' and an embrace with the ideals of the bourgeoise family-state."

Excerpts from Thaemlitz's text to Love for Sale say: "The Queer rallying cry SILENCE=DEATH which once demanded vocality around the material/social conditions of an 'AIDS Crisis' has come to be turned on its head."

Love for Sale chops at assimilation's "silencing of Queer difference suddenly intimating the death of Lesbian and Gay alienation -- cause for celebration." But, says the musician, "concealed in the mist of such newfound love and reconciliation with the 'public,', there has been a corollary increase in legislation and police activity against the Queer community. This is happening particularly in relation to 'public sex' and cruising.... Indeed, it is through silence that we seem to find our strength these days."

A former "Underground Grammy" award-winning DJ (he's released seven albums, five singles, two collaborative albums (with Bill Laswell), and several re-mixes) and hailing from New York's Transexual clubs, and founder of Comatonse Recordings in 1993, Thaemlitz has gained praise as a leading producer of Ambient and Electro-acoustique musics.

His primary interest, as he puts it, "is in the appropriation and recontextualization of cultural signifiers through the very different methodologies of Transgenderism and Electro-acoustique music production." Thaemlitz lives in Oakland, California.

The accolades that the musician has thus far accrued serve to underline the fact that considerable exasperation with sanitized middle class expectations exists outside of political/activist circles with renewed expressions in the arts.

Terre Thaemlitz

URB Magazine readers voted Thaemlitz the "Best Ambient/Experimental Artist of 1997."

MTV-Online says "When he's not cracking cynical snaps like a downtown drag queen, Thaemlitz sounds like a college professor. With rhythm."

Option Magazine says "Thaemlitz carries electronics into the uncharted future."

The Village Voice calls Thaemlitz's music "perfectly post-classical," and compliments his performing in "convincing drag... we saw a rather voluptuous woman."