peter principle
biography



Peter Principle is guitarist and bass wizard in the group Tuxedomoon. His first two solo albums appeared on Crammed Discs, being Sedimental Journey (1986) and Tone Poems (1988). Conjunction followed in 1990, and Idyllatry 2005.

Aged 11, Peter Principle spent an entire summer in his native Queens (New York) 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 achieve primitive sound-on-sound recording. Before long Peter was playing in a rock band, and realised that there were countless serious 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 1977, in cosmopolitan San Francisco, Peter joined forces with Steven Brown and Blaine L. Reininger in the cult band Tuxedomoon. The group relocated to Europe in 1981 and remained there for the next decade, releasing some ten albums as well as a slew of singles, collaborations and solo projects. The most recent Tuxedomoon album, Vapour Trails, was released in 2007.

Peter's first solo album, Sedimental Journey, appeared in 1985, and represented a reaction against mathematical rhythms in music. The beats were purposefully set at different distances from the rhythms, therefore corrupting the listener's expectations. Tone Poems followed in 1988, the soundtrack to several audio-visual performances with Saskia Lupini, supplying an undercurrent of surreal impressionism beneath the hynotic images.

On Conjunction (1990) Peter combined psychedelic music and symbolist harmonics to create 13 sonic sculptures, ranging from environmental to his trademark concrete. In 2005 will release a fourth solo album, Idyllatry.

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