DJ Sprinkles is the renowned alias of Terre Thaemlitz: a public speaker, award winning multi media producer, writer, educator and owner of Comatonse Recordings to boot. Active on the fringes of the music world and deep in the underground, she’s slowly built a reputation as one of the most respected DJs in the world and boasts a career that includes 15 solo albums, an array of 12″ singles and a plethora of remixes. We were delighted to have the pleasure to speak to Terre before her performance at Arena Club next Friday as its quite rare to find someone who is as educated as they are outspoken, and someone who never shies away from the opportunity to enlighten those who lend an ear.
Traditionally you have always been very focused in conveying a message through your music. Do you feel like there is some sort of overhanging pressure now to create music with some sort of political or social message? Or is this something that’s become comfortable to you?
It’s interesting how the way you phrase your questions reveals something about your own views on this, by asking if I now find myself under pressure, or if what was presumably once uncomfortable to do has now become comfortable. If we combine them and read between the lines, you’re asking, “Has the discomfort of trying to convey a message turned into pressure?” [Laughs.] In both of your questions you (inadvertently?) posit the idea that thematic intent must be inherently uncomfortable, pressuring… ie., tedious. For me, the audio component has always been what’s tedious in this scenario. Not the thematic content.
The choice of house music as a vessel for your messages is an interesting one. Much of the original power of house has been watered down over the years and many would say it’s lost that power, making it much more difficult to spread the word. Why choose house over any of the other genres?
I guess you are unfamiliar with all of the various genres in which I produce audio. It was only since the release of “Midtown 120 Blues” that my DJ-ing started getting attention in Europe. Until then, the vast majority of my work in the EU was related to electroacoustic and computer music festivals. That’s the majority of my career. I also produce in other genres, and under various aliases. So nothing has been chosen over anything. It’s about parallel acts of production – despite the press often reducing my production styles, as well as my gender and sexual identifications, into singularities. And that act of producing in multiple genres is in fact a metaphor for multiplicities of gender and sexual identifications, among other things. In other words, “the medium is the message.”
It seems to me that the majority of DJ’s and producers today are less concerned with any sort of movement and are mostly focused on making club tracks. Do you think their vision is misplaced or is it a case of each to their own?
I guess most people simply don’t bother to take the time to think in depth about what they are doing – not only as producers, but in life generally.
With most of your releases under the Sprinkles alias, you’ve included some text or additional information to go with each record. Do you think it’s possible to convey the message that you are trying to present simply by what is cut into the vinyl or is a lot of it conceptual that needs it’s context set?
No, I think the thematic content of audio – particularly largely instrumental audio – is certainly aided by supporting materials. Actually, my releases in other genres contain much more detailed and lengthy texts than the house releases. A lot of these writings have just been released as a book through the publishing house Zaglossus in Austria, called “Nuisance: Writings on identity jamming and electroacoustic audio production.” There are also a lot of texts available on the Comatonse Recordings website.
Anyone who vaguely knows the history of house music will know its relationship to the queer community. Do you think that house music today is observant of those ties formed all those years ago?
I don’t know… do you think people really know about the relationships to Queer communities? Or do you think it’s just a shallow factoid, like saying Taylor Swift’s music has a relationship to Black communities? I’m not convinced that most people really know about the relationships at issue to the point that they actually take on value and deconstruct or challenge heteronormative social relations.
Over the past decade you have made a home for yourself in Japan. One of the biggest developments for electronic, and indeed all music in Japan, is the recent lifting of the 60+ year old anti dancing laws. The club scene is sure to benefit but how do you think it will pan out in the coming years? What issues will it face?
Sadly, you’ve been seriously misinformed about what the changes entail. Please refer to my response to the “Declaration on the Future of Japan’s Club Culture” publicly issued by major Japanese DJ’s, an opinion piece I wrote a while back for Crack, and an interview for Pitchfork:
http://www.comatonse.com/writings/2015_fuueihou.html#en
http://crackmagazine.net/opinion/music/features/perspective-dj-sprinkles/
You’ve spoken before about turning down shows in countries based on their laws regarding the LGBT community. Much of the LGBT-phobia is ingrained in these countries so what do you think it will take for there to be a turn in mindset?
I don’t know. I’m a nihilist, so I don’t really see the world turning into some increasingly accepting place. I see social change, but I do not register things in terms of ‘progress.’ Even within mainstreamed LGBT legal rights and protections, there are vast exclusions in play. Exclusions which get crystalized and harder to move through as a result of certain legislation. I guess the only slight comfort out there is knowing that whether or not there are mass turns of mindset is irrelevant to the fact that perversity is everywhere, always. It is that which is deemed ‘perverse’ that is always at the cusp of gender and sexual struggles. And that is not necessarily what is ‘LGBT,’ which can at times be dangerously conservative and capitulatory. Like, fuck marriage, child-rearing and military service! What kind of fucking propaganda is that shit, when the majority of people are constantly told by mass media that those are our main struggles? When was the last time they wrote about those of us who advocate the end of matrimony, the end of patriarchal-parental possession of other humans, or the end of militarism?
Our understanding of you is that you’re a producer first and a performer second, and only perform because you absolutely have to with record sales alone not being able to cut it. If you could envisage a world where record sales were enough to live off again, how do you think that could happen and what would that world look like? What would you do yourself if that was the case?
It won’t happen, for various reasons related to this industry that are too long to go into now, but which I’ve discussed elsewhere. But if it were the case, I would surely stop touring in a heartbeat! Travel is so brutal. I’m constantly sick after long-haul flights. I feel so sorry for flight attendants and pilots.
Are there any artists in house who are really doing it for you right now? Any tips for up-and-comers?
Actually, Will Long (aka Celer), who is also a US ex-pat living in Japan, has started making house tracks, and I really love them. I was a fan of his ambient productions for years, and there’s some drone-like sensibility that carried over to his deep house tracks. Although they sound nothing like SND, they remind me of SND in that they don’t use basslines. That’s really tricky to make work. I’ve been playing them in my sets a lot over the last year, and we’re putting them out on Comatonse this year – hopefully on both vinyl and CD. (I’m still continuing with my “offline digital culture” strategies by only doing physical distribution, and not doing download releases.)
We’re very much looking forward to seeing you this month at White Nights! What else can we expect from you this year?
Same shit, different day…
DJ Sprinkles be playing for White Nights at Arena Club on a top notch bill that will also see see sets from Arnaldo, Sabine Hoffman and Harry Leath. All the information for the event can be found here on RA or can also be found on their Facebook event page.