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Thurston Moore discusses ‘lost’ techno record

By Andy Malt | Published on Thursday 28 September 2017

Thurston Moore has recorded a techno record. So that’s a thing now. Don’t go looking for it though, even if you were able to find it, it wouldn’t have his name on the cover.

Moore discusses the album on the latest Talkhouse Podcast, on which he’s interviewed by LCD Soundsystem’s Tyler Pope. Pope was keen to discuss Moore’s thoughts on electronic music, but it turned out that the Sonic Youth man had already discussed the topic in another interview with Pitchfork earlier that day. Though that was because Pope had foolishly suggested it as a topic to Pitchfork’s interviewer, it emerged.

In the Pitchfork interview – for the website’s ‘Over/Under’ series – Moore said sternly: “[Techno is] a brain dead exercise of plastic sound”.

He then laughed and added: “I’m sorry, I actually really like a lot of techno. I think it really needs to be discussed in a more academic way than, you know, just as a music for ding-dongs who like to snort coke and try to get laid, but they’re not going to, so they’re just stuck with their shitty techno records … Oh man, have you heard my techno record?”

And there Pitchfork’s Thurston techno chat ends. So it’s lucky the second interview took place, because that quote raised more questions than it answered, I think.

Speaking to Pope shortly after the Pitchfork interview, Moore explains: “They were asking me about techno, so I went really deep on super techno disparagement, and then I flipped it and went into a complete, like, all the accolades I could think of about techno and talking about my [own] lost techno record”.

All of that sounds a lot more interesting than what Pitchfork actually put out. As Pope agrees, while spluttering all over his microphone at the mention of a Thurston Moore techno record.

“I have this lost techno record that I’m holding onto”, Moore continues. “It’s crazy, I’ve never played it for anybody. Nobody wants to hear me do a techno record”.

Pope clearly disagrees. Then Moore goes on to explain that he’d wanted to get techno remixes done of tracks on Sonic Youth’s ‘Ciccone Youth’ album, but that he was outvoted by the rest of the band. “I was at the mercy of being in a democracy, so I couldn’t make it exactly how I would have made it, but I would eventually do that on my solo techno record that no one’s ever heard”.

He doesn’t rule out sharing his own techno dabblings with world at some point. However, he says, “it would be pseudonymous, it’s not going to be under my name. I don’t want anybody to come to it with any sort of preconceived idea, like, this insufferable idiot just made a techno record”.

So now, forever more, every time you hear a really insufferable techno track by a little known producer, you’ll wonder if it was actually Thurston Moore who made it.

If you can get past how much Moore sounds like Gene Simmons these days, you can listen to the full, very interesting Talkhouse interview here: