Deluxe 3LP set. Terre Thaemlitz's Soil receives a timely reissue, returning one of the most challenging and prescient albums of the 1990s to circulation. Originally released in 1995 as the seventh installment in Instinct Records' "Instinct Ambient" series, the album represented Thaemlitz's deliberate assault on the contradictions he perceived within the contemporary ambient movement. When Thaemlitz signed with Greenwich Village's Instinct imprint, the label assumed he would be "another Moby," producing marketable ambient works similar to the popular 1993 album Ambient. Instead, after compiling wild-eyed 12" ideas into 1994's Tranquilizer and inadvertently foreshadowing dubstep, phonk and cloud rap, Thaemlitz created something far more confrontational with Soil, using computer synthesis rather than MIDI synths and samplers for the first time.

"I'm still most influenced by '70s jazz-funk and disco," Thaemlitz explained in 1997. "I think this is because they are both populist and leftist signifiers, which is the inherent contradiction I associate with the Contemporary Ambient movement." Soil represents his attempt to attack that contradiction head-on in the most visible way possible. The album systematically deconstructs ambient music's assumptions. "Elevatorium" combines groggy muzak-like synths with environmental recordings reminiscent of Irv Tiebel's nature sounds, but Thaemlitz disrupts the pastoral mood with rowdy mariachi band sounds, blurring everything into dubby half-speed sub-heavy vibrations. A soft, almost inaudible solo piano recital follows, lampooning the canon by sensualizing its typically sexless presentation.

By "Yer Ass Is Grass," ambient signifiers evaporate entirely, replaced by laptop-mangled, time-stretched gurgles and musique concrète edits. A voice recounts the story of Charles Whitman, the notorious "Texas Tower Sniper," comparing him with Lee Harvey Oswald. This stark juxtaposition of violence against ambient music's supposed tranquility exemplifies Thaemlitz's critique. The album's explorations range from just intonation on "Subjective Loss, Day 83" to the almost KLF-meets-Burroughs tape cut-ups featuring drill sergeant vocals. The slowness and timbral experimentation of "Aging Core, Aging Periphery" presaged later work by Sarah Davachi and Kara-Lis Coverdale, while "Cycles" builds from minimal textures to a sobering conclusion featuring a woman's voice recounting domestic violence, themes later explored more rigorously on 2017's Deproduction.

Soil stands as both historical document and contemporary warning about music's political implications, demonstrating how supposedly neutral aesthetic choices carry ideological weight.