Terre Thaemlitz - Tranquilizer (30th Anniv. Restored & Expanded Ed. 1994-2024) (2024)

Among our most loved ‘90s ambient house records, Terre Thaemlitz’s debut album is mercifully - finally - expanded and reissued for its 30th anniversary, including an incredible prototype for ambient Memphis rap instrumentals and some would even say dubstep - now expanded to well over two hours long, with a delectable bonus disc full of deep cuts.

One that puts a lump in our throat from the opening strokes, ‘Tranquillizer’ marks a key point of departure for Thaemlitz from the deep house they DJ’d at NYC clubs from the late ‘80s to fully embrace its spiritual descendants - ambient house and downbeat - and embark on a stellar oeuvre defined by a timeless sound sensitivity and pathos.

The original version of Thaemlitz’s maiden album voyage would include ‘Raw Through a Straw’ - a sublime 11 minute transition from new age synth blooz to rollin breaks - alongside seven other cuts that beautifully took the potential of a broader canvas to paint widescreen visions of post-club music at the ’90’s midriff. This reissue now expands the 69 minute OG to over twice the length with never-before-heard, raw, alternate versions and inclusions of related, contemporaneous material from the same era.

Effectively picking up the baton from the likes of the KLF or The Orb and L.B. Bad’s new age house, and with uncanny parallels here and there to Move D and Jonah Sharp’s Reagenz project of the same era, on ‘Tranquilizer’ Thaemlitz would delineate and diffuse deep house’s romantic energies and spirit along electro-acoustic and sanguine vectors with a dreamlike seduction and melancholic traction that resonates with listeners’ needs into the present day. His perfectly slanted opener ’040468’ is titled for the date of MLK’s death (and coincidentally the year of Terre’s birth) and is a massive percy for us, spending over 8 minutes layering radio interceptions and shine-eyed synths into a lather, underlined by an LFO-flared sub-bassline with a gait that surely parallels the humid lean of early Memphis rap instrumentals (just down the road from her formative Missouri) or G-funk, and most uncannily pre-echoes the halfstep and meditative minimalism of early dubstep by a decade. A longtime travelling partner for us, it definitely warrants the cost of admission alone - it’s that good.

The rest of the OG follows to limn the sort of curious magick Thaemlitz would expand on in later years, with the ambient blues of ‘Fat Chair’ like a solemn echo of The Orb, and ‘Meditation of the Mountain Oyster’ rolling out tabla breaks into acidic horizons, and the closing section of melt-on-mind downbeats in ‘Hovering Glows’ thru the concrète-ambient frissons of ‘2 A.M. On a Silo’ to ‘Fina/Departure’ frankly leaving us in a puddle of tears and feels. The bonus disc is also totally prime, threading reverb-contrails thru ‘Get in and Drive’, an unmissable reminder of her deep house roots, two previously unreleased edits of ‘Fina’, and a stunning version of the spine-kissing ‘Hovering Glows’, plus its subtly re-tuned ‘Little Guy Mix’.

For us, ‘Tranquillizer’ is an epitome of ambient music as deeply affective, dematerialised soul music, we can only hope others will get as much from this reissued prompt as we have over the years - an indelibly imprinted carousel of memories, fond and forlorn.