Founded by Steven Brown and Blaine Reininger in San Francisco, Tuxedomoon are a futuristic alternate reality of delirium and existential dread. Aligned with fellow Bay Area experimentalists The Residents (to whose Ralph Records the group eventually signed) and Robin Crutchfield’s post-DNA project Dark Day, Tuxedomoon developed a unique combination of synthesizer and guitar that placed them at the forefront of the US post-punk movement in the late ’70s and early ’80s. Their 1978 debut EP, No Tears, was recorded with vocalist Winston Tong and sound engineer Tommy Tadlock. Replete with tense synth swells, devastating live drums and a psychotic ode to the “creatures of the night,” the title track is a crucial entry in the synth-punk canon that stacks up next to the best work by Units and The Screamers. Reininger’s electric violin congeals with electronic atmospherics to unnerving ends on the instrumental “Litebulb Overkill.” Few records do justice to the mania and paranoia of a forsaken city; none do it for San Francisco like Tuxedomoon’s No Tears.
12" $12.00
12/17/2013
Founded by Steven Brown and Blaine Reininger in San Francisco, Tuxedomoon are a futuristic alternate reality of delirium and existential dread. Aligned with fellow Bay Area experimentalists The Residents (to whose Ralph Records the group eventually signed) and Robin Crutchfield’s post-DNA project Dark Day, Tuxedomoon developed a unique combination of synthesizer and guitar that placed them at the forefront of the US post-punk movement in the late ’70s and early ’80s. Scream With a View, recorded surreptitiously in The Residents’ private studio in 1979, advances brilliant melodic concepts through analog technology for a sound barely comprehensible today. On “Where Interests Lie,” punchy drum machine underlies barbed and eerie leads from guitarist Michael Belfer (The Sleepers). “(Special Treatment for the) Family Man”—a reference to Dan White’s trial for the assassination of San Francisco’s mayor George Moscone and supervisor Harvey Milk in 1978—is an indignant vigil cut with a rare brand of macabre humor. Saxophone, Polymoog, violin, e-bowed guitar, and CB radio interference make Scream With a View the insidious foil to the urgent No Tears EP.
12" $12.00
12/17/2013