Sundaze (18)

Hello, today a second installment of Tuxedomoon on Sundaze, this time checking some of the members solo work, Reininger and Brown have been very prolific with the latter even pursuing another succesfull path with Nine Rain, his mexican avant garde band. Here however i've tried to keep the latest work for what they are and concentrate on thhe early work when Tuxedoblood was still pumping .
Next week at Sundaze another Inside - Out with some more binaural titles and metaphysical news..

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Blaine L. Reininger - Colorado Suite/Paris En Automne (84/85 flac  309mb)

Blaine L. Reininger is an American composer born in 1953 in Pueblo, Colorado. Having studied violin from age 9 guitar from age 11 and music theory and composition through high school and into college, he left Colorado in 1976 for San Francisco. There, in 1977, as a consequence of his studies in electronic music at San Francisco City College, he started the legendary American cult band Tuxedomoon together with classmate Steven Brown.

Blaine L. Reininger was the first member of Tuxedomoon to record a solo album, with Broken Fingers appearing in 1982. After leaving the band early in 1983, Blaine collaborated with Sleepers guitarist and occasional TM member Michael Belfer on Night Air. Produced by Blaine with Gareth Jones, this masterful part-vocal, part-instrumental album proved a significant critical and commercial success on release on 1984. After fruitful collaborations with Mikel Rouse and Vini Reilly of the Durutti Column (featured on the accomplished Instrumentals CD), Blaine released the powerful in-concert set Live in Brussels in 1986, followed by a string of further studio albums, including Byzantium, Book of Hours, Songs From the Rain Palace and The More I Learn the Less I Know. His film and theatre soundtracks include Radio Moscow, Manic Man and most recently Elektra.
Blaine also continues his long-standing duo work with Steven Brown, which has included several film, theatre and ballet soundtracks, as well as superlative piano/violin recitals of the kind preserved on the Live in Lisbon CD. Currently Blaine Reininger resides in Athens, and pursues parallel careers as a solo artist, releasing Glossolalia last year, and as Tuxedomoon member.

Colorado Suite (made to measure for a western)



1 - Side Wind (6:17)
2 - Windy Outside (6:38)
3 - West Wind (7:37)
4 - Sun Study (6:25)



5 - Paris En Automne (For J.J.) (4:33)
6 - Singular World (4:13)
7 - Raise Your Hands (5:06)
8 - Burn Like Rome (4:53)
9 - The Homecoming (4:38)

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Steven Brown - Music For Solo Piano (84 flac 162mb)

Steven Brown these days is not only still involved with Tuxedomoon but with his mexican band Nine Rain aswell. Infact over the years he's been very busy, writing and playing music, not just as a keyboardman but he likes his windinstruments aswell..sax in partiicular and maybe i should include voice/vocals here too. Music for Solo Piano was the first project that was totally the work of Brown, and was released in 1984 by Crepuscule. He has, as a solo artist, recorded some ten solo albums, including Music For Solo Piano (1984), Zoo Story (1984), Searching For Contact (1987), Music for Film and Theatre (1988), and Half Out (1991). In 2002 LTM released a Best Of collection titled Decade. The all-instrumental Music for Solo Piano was originally recorded for Les Disques du Crepuscule in 1984, and remains one of Steven's best regarded works. The solo piano pieces range from modern to classically-informed, while on several tracks Steven is joined by Tuxedomoon violinist Blaine Reininger. These include three selections from TM's ambitious opera without wordsÇ The Ghost Sonata, namely Music #2, The Fall and the haunting Ghost Sonata itself. Brown has emerged as a leading force of the new music, which rejects the conventional separation of pop, classical and avant garde music forceful and subversive. Brown's solo work is marked by a deep intellectual content, including dedications to the German film director Rainer Fassbinder and a score based on Edward Albee's play Zoo Story. Later composition were inspired by the literature of Jean Genet and William Burroughs and the sonnets of British poet John Keats.

In 1993 Steven Brown and Nicolás Klau moved to Mexico. With the idea of continuing a project begun in Bruxelles they soon began working with Jose Manuel Aguilera (guitar, voice) and Juan Carlos Lopez (drums, percussion) on new music. Within the year they were playing all over Mexico City as well as touring around the country playing music of Brown, Klau and Tuxedomoon. From the onset this repertoire will begin to be influenced by Mexican music eventually giving birth to the unique Nine Rain sound. 1995 Alejandro Herrera joins the group incorporating Son Jarocho the traditional music of Veracruz with his instruments, the Requinto and the Jarana. March of 1996 Nine Rain presents their first Cd Nine Rain (chiknawi Quiahuitl in nauhuatl) in the prestigious Music Hall Blas Galindo in Mexico City. The CD Nine Rain is mix of atmospheres, languages and sounds that weaves a web of staccato fandango rhythms. In 1999 Brown Klau Aguilera and Herrera decide to record a second cd, and at the suggestion of Edmundo Navas the CD Rain of Fire will be recorded in Havana Cuba in the famous EGREM studios. In 2000 Nine rain is commissioned to compose the original music for the Mexican pavilion at the World Expo in Hannover. In June of 2006 Nine Rain completes the final mixing of what will be their third compact disc. As of this writing untitled, the disk includes eleven new compositions and was recorded and produced by Nikolas Klau.



01 - Piano No.1 (2:29)
02 - Waltz (1:26)
03 - The Ball (2:27)
04 - Hold Me While I'm Naked (3:09)
05 - Close Little Sixes (0:52)
06 - Fanfare (4:07)
07 - Egypt (4:18)
08 - The Fall (3:05)
09 - Fantasie For Clarinet & Violin (8:13)
10 - R.W.F. (3:18)
11 - Rotterdam Lullabye (8:14)

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Winston Tong - Theoretically Chinese (85 now in Flac 395mb)

Polymath performance artist Winston Tong was born in San Francisco in 1951, the son of Chinese parents exiled by the Communist revolution. He graduated in theatre from the California Institute of Arts in 1973, and quickly established a reputation in the Bay Area with a string of charismatic performance pieces such as Wild Boys, Eliminations, Frankie and Johnnie and Bound Feet, the latter loosely based on traditional oriental puppet theatre, and an Obie award winner. In late 1977 Tong met an early incarnation of Tuxedomoon, then comprising Steven Brown, Blaine Reininger and Victoria Lowe, after Lowe invited Tong to perform at a self-organized salon, Chez Dada. Afterwards Tong agreed to perform with the band as and when time allowed, a flexible arrangement which would remain in place until he finally ceased working with the band in 1985. At about the same time Tong met Bruce Geduldig, who would take on responsibility for visuals and staging with both Tong and Tuxedomoon.

Tong was absent from the first Tuxedomoon album, Half Mute, but returned for Desire, released to great acclaim in 1981, as well as their first European tour. Soon afterwards the band relocated to Europe on a permanent basis, settling first in Rotterdam and then Brussels. Several albums emerged on which Tong featured heavily, including Divine, Suite en Sous-Sol and The Ghost Sonata, the latter an ambitious 'opera without words' staged in Italy in the summer of 1982. At the same time Tong continued to reprise solo theatre performances such as Frankie and Johnnie.

At the beginning of 1983 Blaine Reininger quit Tuxedomoon for a solo career, and athough he would return in 1987, this setback left the band inactive for much of the next two years. Tong sang lead on an interim single, Soma, but elected to devote more time and energy to a musical collaboration with Belgian singer Niki Mono, in January 1984 they recorded a nine-song studio demo, which impressed Crepuscule sufficiently to sign the project for an album. In April Tong and Mono were dispatched to London to record the first single. Produced by Alan Rankine (ex Associates) and Dave Formula (ex Magazine), Theoretical China featured a stellar cast of guest musicians including Jah Wobble, Simon Topping (A Certain Ratio) and Steven Morris (New Order), although despite the exceptional pedigree of the supporting players the track doesn't quite gel as a funk-dance cut. At the end of April Tong and Mono traveled to Tokyo for a string of live dates with The Durutti Column and Mikado. During this trip the pair recorded The Hunger, a haunting sixteen minute track on which several Japanese musicians guest, including Atsuo Suzuki and Satoshi Kadakura. The Hunger is unquestionably one of Tong's best musical recordings.

At the same time Tong undertook an altogether different musical project, being the soundtrack to Miserere (Mercy), a modern ballet based on the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. Commissioned by choreographer Pierre Droulers, the remarkable soundtrack by Tong and Sussan Deyhim was recorded exclusively acappella and. Feared lost for many years, the masters were eventually rediscovered and released by LTM in 2003. The Winston Tong 'pop' album eventually appeared as Theoretically Chinese in October 1985. It's an album of peerless electronic dance pop, the sound expansive and expensive, and a million miles from the angst, night and fog for which Tuxedomoon were renowned. The album sold well enough in Europe, although Crepuscule must have been galled that there were no live dates in support, and that Tong had already donated his best solo composition, In A Manner of Speaking, to Tuxedomoon.

That song proved an undisputed highlight of their first post-Reininger album, Holy Wars, released in April 1985, Tong assisted TM with the launch of the album, but was gone by the summer, devoting his time to the completion of his solo album, and performances of Miserere in Paris and elsewhere. Tong afterwards returned to the States, hoping to land a role in Bernardo Bertolucci's epic film The Last Emperor, and David Hwang's M. Butterfly on Broadway. Sadly there have been no more solo records. However Tong has continued to perform new shows such as Winston Tong Sings Duke Ellington and Rasputin, Isadora and Mao. He is alive and well and working on new projects in San Francisco, and appeared with Tuxedomoon for their 25th year reunion concerts in the city in March 2005.



01 - Big Brother (5:09)
02 - Endgame (4:31)
03 - The Quotidian (5:20)
04 - Theoretical China (5:43)
05 - Yellow Peril (3:40)
06 - Broken English (5:58)
07 - No Regrets (6:00)
08 - Reports From The Heart (5:50)
09 - The Principles Of Movement (6:47)
10 - The Hunger (15:50)

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Peter Principle - Tone Poems (88 flac 182mb)

The Peter Principle is a special case of a ubiquitous observation: anything that works will be used in progressively more challenging applications until it fails. This is "The Generalized Peter Principle." as observed by Dr. William R. Corcoran

Peter Principle (born :1954) is guitarist and bass wizard in the group Tuxedomoon. His first two solo albums appeared on Crammed Discs' acclaimed Made to Measure imprint, being Sedimental Journey (1986) and Tone Poems (1988). Conjunction followed on LTM in 1990, and Idyllatry in 2005.
Aged 11, Peter Principle spent an entire summer in his native Queens (NYC) mowing an old woman's lawn, the agreed reward being an ancient reel-to-reel tape recorder. Peter then secreted himself away with his new toy and quickly discovered just how many wonderful things he could achieve with it, such as creating feedback with speakers, or inserting a plectrum and erase-head to create primitive sound-on-sound recording.Before long Peter was playing in a rock band, and realised that there were countless seruious composers (with impressive academic credentials) making music by employing the same techniques. Thus Peter had re-invented musique concrete without even knowing that it existed.In San Francisco in 1977 Peter joined forces with Steven Brown and Blaine L. Reininger in Tuxedomoon.

Peter's first solo album, Sedimental Journey, appeared in 1985, and represents a reaction against mathematical rhythms in music. here the beats are purposefully set at different distances from the rhythms, so corrupting the listener's expectations.Tone Poems followed in 1988, the soundtrack to the scores of "Parelmoer", a stage production, and "Innocence", a videotape, both by Saskia Lupini, supplying an undercurrent of surreal impressionism beneath the hynotic images. It was recorded in a tent between The Lion & The Eagle, summer 1987, and in The Ivory Tower Brocceliande. Completed at Daylight, July 1988. The motto : "In honour of the muses & the technology, home-taping is making music"..On Conjunction (1990) Peter combined psychedelic music and symbolist harmonics to create 13 sonic sculptures, ranging from environmental to his trademark concrete music.



01 - Le Maka (9:05)
Le Maka Part 1. 28 Day Snake
Le Maka Part 2. Theme
Le Maka Part 3. Sgt Rock In The Ardennes
02 - Sphinx (6:12)
03 - Sub-Lunar Folly (0:54)
04 - The Observatory (4:36)
05 - Independance Day (4:36)
06 - Pillar Of Salt (2:09)
07 - Orval (2:10)
08 - Orion's Shadow (4:43)
09 - Dolphins (1:28)
10 - Riding The Silver Chord (2:48)

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