Terre Thaemlitz has released a second 12” E.P. of music from her previously CD-only 1994 debut LP, Tranquilizer. This time the record’s focused on the track, Fina. The long, original version, subtitled Departure, is a slow ritual rattling of percussion and cicada song. Full of the sort of gentle tribal textures employed by “organic industrialists”, like O Yuki Conjugate, and later featured on future treasures such as Nuel’s Trance Mutation. Guiding the listener on a journey, deep up river looking for Joseph Conrad’s Kurtz. Mournful but comforting strings eventually counter the track’s sense of unease. Creating a calm that’s akin to becoming accustomed to the dark, before dissolving into insect chatter and distant thunder storms. A second mix keeps the field recordings, but drops the drums to concentrate on the ambient sighs of the analogue synths. The stretched sustained notes possessing a chamber orchestra ache and synergising perfectly with the sampled wildlife’s summer chorus. Sounding like Brian Eno doing Arvo Part. Echoing Aphex Twin’s Stone In Focus and Lichen.

Terre Thaemlitz famously doesn’t want any of her music online. So no tracks on Youtube, etc., and also no tracks in mixes or live streams. Her discussion of this subject is long, and complicated, but it basically boils down to the fact that she wants to retain complete control. I totally respect that, however, you could argue that once she’s released the music, and asked people to pay for it, then to strictly regulate how they can play it might be a bit much. That’s a whole separate debate, but the vinyl pressings of her Tranquilizer tunes, and sticking to her strict stipulations, have made me think.

I don’t really have any live DJ gigs anymore, so if I can’t spin these 12s on my radio shows – which are archived and streamed – when would I spin them? I live in the mountains. Very rarely receive visitors. Did I buy this record to listen to it on my own? In a way it was an epiphany, a wake up call.

In hindsight, I got into buying records primarily so that I could share music. Making mixtapes for friends in the 1980s. DJing in bars and clubs through the 90s until relatively recently. Music was always an easy conversation starter. “What do you like?” “Have you heard this?” And again, in hindsight, both were a way of introducing and expressing myself. Showing people who I am and what I’m into. If I can`t share it, listen to it with mates – online or physically – do I need it at all? Having thought this about Terre’s records, I’m now asking myself a similar question about everything. Who, what, am I buying records for?

I’ve realised that my shelves are a library, and also a diary, a scrapbook, and the records themselves, writing tools, references, prompts and cues. Some bits of vinyl hold treasured memories, just like old photographs, and others are of social / cultural / historical significance. They all have a story to tell.