Cult legends Tuxedomoon are a welcome exception in today's over-formatted musical world. Born in 1977, in the heady atmosphere of San Francisco’s postpunk golden age, the band soon became a central part of New York's No Wave scene (as documented in the "Downtown 81" film, centered around Jean Michel Basquiat and featuring performances by Blondie, James Chance, DNA and Tuxedomoon). "No Tears", their 2nd single (1979), has remained an electro punk club classic to this day. The band went on to sign to The Residents' Ralph Records, and released two seminal albums, "Half Mute" (1980) and "Desire" (1981) ...
Tuxedomoon member Peter Principle's untimely demise
He was 63. The probable cause of his sudden death is a heart attack, or a stroke. The band celebrates its 40th anniversary this year, and had gathered in Brussels to rehearse for a tour and to write music for a new album.
Peter was an exceptional bass & guitar player, and a great sonic experimentalist. He had joined Tuxedomoon shortly after the band's creation by Steven Brown et Blaine Reininger, and played a central role in the composition, recording and production of all the band's records, from their first EPs and their debut album "Half-Mute" (1980) to their most recent releases, the "Pink Narcissus" album (2014) and the original soundtrack for the film "Blue Velvet Revisited" (2015).
Peter Principle also recorded four very interesting solo albums ( "Sedimental Journey" and "Tone Poem", respectively released by Crammed in 1985 & 1989, as part of the Made To Measure series, and "Conjunction" [1990] & "Idyllatry" [2005]), in which he gave free rein to his taste for experimentation and his love for quasi-psychedelic soundscapes. He once explained that he had discovered the magic of pure sound by listening to the sound of lawn-mowers in his native New York suburb, and then proceeded to reinvent musique concrète (which he didn’t know already existed)…
Born Peter Dachert, he had adopted this pseudonym as an ironic tribute to the book of the same name ("The Peter Principle", a satirical management theory which states a.o. that, in all hierarchies, any employee tends to rise to the position where he reaches a maximal level of incompetence, or something like that…)
Peter Principle also produced albums for other artists, including Minimal Compact, Marine, Isolation Ward, Sprung aus Den Wolken & more, and recorded with the likes of Wim Mertens. These last few years, he collaborated with his friend Dok Gregory under the project name Zero Gravity Thinkers.
His presence, his intriguing ideas, his imposing silhouette and stage presence, his inimitable bass guitar style will be cruelly missed.
