PETER PRINCIPLE
biography



Peter Principle 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 in 1990. He is currently preparing a new solo project for release later 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 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, Cabin in the Sky, was released in 2004.

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 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.

As on half of Principle/Fetterman, Peter released a CD single (Motomotion) in 2004, and in 2005 will release a new solo album through LTM.

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