Tuxedomoon - Holywars

Genere: Rock/Pop.
Styles: Alternative, New Wave, Indie.
Similar Artist: Residents, Cabaret Voltaire, Devo.
Record Year: Cramboy, 1985.

Tuxedomoon is an avant-garde, electronic-oriented collective whose music ranges from new wave pop to jazz fusion to more experimental synthesizer soundscapes (usually including saxophone and violin), which were frequently married in concert to performance-art shows. Tuxedomoon was formed in San Francisco in 1977 by two electronic music students at San Francisco City College, Blaine L. Reininger (keyboards, violin) and Steven Brown (keyboards, other instruments).

Brown's local theater connections supplied equipment and occasional vocalists in Gregory Cruikshank and Victoria Lowe, plus more frequent contributions from singer and performance artist Winston Tong. Punk and new wave were opening up the San Francisco music scene at the time, and Tuxedomoon landed an opening slot for Devo in 1978 at around the same time they cut their first single, "Pinheads on the Move." Lowe quit the band before their first EP, No Tears, which featured off-and-on members Michael Belfer (guitar) and Paul Zahl (drums). Tong and Belfer departed temporarily, and Peter Principle (b. Peter Dachert) joined as a full-time member. Tuxedomoon signed to the Residents' Ralph Records in 1979, which eventually got them overseas exposure.

Feeling that their ideas were more in tune with the European electronic music scene, the band toured Europe after 1980's Half Mute, for which Tong returned with filmmaker and visual artist Bruce Geduldig. After 1981's Desire, the band relocated in an artist's commune in Rotterdam, Netherlands. Within a year though they were forced to leave and moved to Brussels, to find first shelter in the Plan K. (a live p.a. club). Reininger began to branch out as a solo artist. Tuxedomoon was also hired to score a Maurice Bejart ballet, the results of which were released in 1982 as Divine. Reininger left for a solo career in 1983 and was replaced by Frankie Lievaart and horn player Luc Van Lieshout.

In between side projects and scoring, the band sought an international deal for their forthcoming LP Holy Wars; it was eventually released in 1985 and became the band's biggest commercial success. Tong left the group for good that year, leaving Brown and Principle the only remaining San Francisco members; multi-instrumentalist Ivan Georgiev was hired to replenish the group's sound for 1986's Ship of Fools album and tour. Scoring work from past projects has been reissued in Belgium. Reininger, Brown, Principle and Lieshout still record together as Tuxedomoon, whilst Reininger, Brown, Principle and Tong have all recorded as solo artists.

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FOH Compilation - Death Rock 1

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Genere: Rock/Pop.
Styles: Goth Rock, Metal.
Similar Artist: Type O' Negative, Love Like Blood.
Record Year: 2004.

In 1991, Umbra et Imago were created as a side-project of The Electric Avantgarde. In the following year, the two bands were still existing alongside. There were plans for The Electric Avantgarde to change its style to Death Metal, but those were soon dropped.

The band dissolved and was later reformed as Dracul so that Umbra et Imago became Mozart's main project.

In 1992 Umbra et Imago player their first stage shows, where visual effects played an important role. While the band's style was still dominated by electronic influences, there were frequent appearances of guest musicians such as Peter Heppner of Wolfsheim. The band began to develop an excentric image and they were known for their fancy concerts . Umbra et Imago polarized critics and were even publicly criticized. In the same year, their album Träume, Sex und Tod was publisher, one year later Infantile Spiele was released.

As their album tracks often exceeded lengths of 10 minutes they were unsuited for play in discotheques and were not included to DJs' programs. Because of that, Umbra et Imago created a remix of their song Erotica which they called ZöllerMussEsSpielen Mix ({{lang-de|Zöllner's Got To Play It Mix), referring to Michael Zöllner, a resident DJ of Bochum's Zwischenfall discotheque. Despite its length, Gothic Eroti from the 1993 album Infantile Spiele remained the band's best known song.

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Eric Clapton - Clapton (2010)

Genere:  Rock/Pop.
Styles: Blues-Rock, Adult Contemporary.
Similar Artist: Cream, Blind Faith, Ten Years After.
Record Year: Reprise Records, 2010.

Clapton is Eric Clapton’s first solo album in five years, but he hardly spent the back half of the 2000s in seclusion. After 2005’s Back Home, he went on a journey through the past, writing a 2007 autobiography -- also titled Clapton, although that’s the only connection they shared -- mending fences with Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker for a brief Cream reunion, establishing a lasting connection with his old Blind Faith bandmate Steve Winwood, and recording a duet album with his ‘70s inspiration JJ Cale. This embrace of history isn’t directly heard on Clapton but it’s certainly felt, extending to how EC relies on old tunes -- blues and country, but also pop and R&B -- for the bulk of this 14-track album. EC is no stranger to covers and the sound of the album is familiar, but there’s no record quite like Clapton in his catalog. The closest may be Unplugged, which also ambles along with an unhurried shuffle, but this boasts a greater musical range, mixing up Fats Waller and Robert Wilkins with Hoagy Carmichael and Irving Berlin, finding room for guests appearances by Winwood, Allen Toussaint, Wynton Marsalis, Sheryl Crow, Derek Trucks and selected members from Preservation Hall Jazz Band. Yes, it is eclectic, even dipping into a bit of a soulful soft-rock groove on “Everything Will Be Alright,” but not self-consciously so. Clapton flows easily, the blues never hitting too hard, the New Orleans jazz never getting too woozy, the standards never too sleepy, the sounds subtly shifting but changing all the same. It’s leisurely in its performance and its length, perhaps running just a little too long, but it’s hard to complain because the slow ramble is so enjoyable. Eric Clapton has never sounded so relaxed on record, either as a singer -- he is supple and casually authoritative, a far cry from the tentative lead vocalist of his earliest solo records -- or a bandleader, sounding at peace with his past yet harboring no desire to recycle it, even if he’s reaching back far beyond the blues that initially sparked his interest in music. He’s simply laying back and enjoying what he’s playing, winding up with one of his simplest and best records.

Part 1

Part 2

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Tristesse De La Lune - Queen Of The Damned

Genere:  Rock/Pop
Styles: Electropop
Similar Artist: Blutengel,
Record Year: Out Of Line, 2003.

Tristesse de la Lune (translates to "Sadness of the Moon" in french) is an electropop group founded by German musicians Kati Roloff and Gini Martin, who gained fame as the female vocalists in Blutengel for songs as "Weg Zu Mir," "Fairyland(Female Version)", "Seelenschmerz", "I'm Dying Alone" among others. Both left Blutengel at the end of 2001 for personal and unknown reasons, and as they said in a 2002 interview "Blutengel was becoming too cliché", and formed Tristesse de la Lune. Their songs typically have romantic lyrics usually inspired in their personal lives or books. They are on Out of Line Music and are one of the main bands of the label.

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The Smiths - Hatful Of Hollow

Genere:  Rock/Pop
Styles: Alternative / Indie Rock
Similar Artists: Echo and the Bunnymen, Felt, The The
Recording Year: Sire, 1984.

The Smiths were the definitive British indie rock band of the '80s, marking the end of synth-driven new wave and the beginning of the guitar rock that dominated English rock into the '90s. Sonically, the group was indebted to the British Invasion, crafting ringing, melodic three-minute pop singles, even for their album tracks. But their scope was far broader than that of a revivalist band. The group's core members, vocalist Morrissey and guitarist Johnny Marr, were obsessive rock fans inspired by the D.I.Y. ethics of punk, but they also had a fondness for girl groups, pop, and rockabilly. Morrissey and Marr also represented one of the strangest teams of collaborators in rock history. Marr was the rock traditionalist, looking like an elegant version of Keith Richards during the Smiths' heyday and meticulously layering his guitar tracks in the studio. Morrissey, on the other hand, broke from rock tradition by singing in a keening, self-absorbed croon, embracing the forlorn, romantic poetry of Oscar Wilde, publicly declaring his celibacy, performing with a pocketful of gladioli and a hearing aid, and making no secret of his disgust for most of his peers. While it eventually led to the Smiths' early demise, the friction between Morrissey and Marr resulted in a flurry of singles and albums over the course of three years that provided the blueprint for British guitar rock in the following decade.

Before forming the Smiths in 1982, Johnny Marr (born John Maher, October 31, 1963; guitar) had played in a variety of Manchester-based rock & roll bands, including Sister Ray, Freaky Part, White Dice, and Paris Valentinos. On occasion, Marr had come close to a record contract -- one of his bands won a competition Stiff Records held to have Nick Lowe "produce your band" -- but he never quite made the leap. Though Morrissey (born Steven Patrick Morrissey, May 22, 1959; vocals) had sung for a few weeks with the Nosebleeds and auditioned for Slaughter & the Dogs, he had primarily contented himself to being a passionate, vocal fan of both music and film. During his teens, he wrote the Melody Maker frequently, often getting his letters published. He had written the biography/tribute James Dean Isn't Dead, which was published by the local Manchester publishing house Babylon Books in the late '70s, as well as another book on the New York Dolls; he was also the president of the English New York Dolls fan club. Morrissey met Marr, who was then looking for a lyricist, through mutual friends in the spring of 1982. The pair began writing songs, eventually recording some demos with the Fall's drummer, Simon Wolstencroft. By the fall, the duo had settled on the name the Smiths and recruited Marr's schoolmate Andy Rourke as their bassist and Mike Joyce as their drummer.

Several months after releasing their first album, the Smiths issued the singles and rarities collection Hatful of Hollow, establishing a tradition of repackaging their material as many times and as quickly as possible. While several cuts on Hatful of Hollow are BBC versions of songs from The Smiths, the versions on the compilation are nervy and raw -- and they're also not the selling point of the record. The Smiths treated singles as individual entities, not just ways to promote an album, and many of their finest songs were never issued on their studio albums. Hatful of Hollow contains many of these classics, including the sweet rush of "William, It Was Really Nothing," and the sardonic "Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now," the tongue-in-cheek lament of "Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want," the wistful "Back to the Old House," "Girl Afraid," and the pulsating, tremolo-laced masterpiece "How Soon Is Now?" With such strong material forming the core of the album, it's little wonder that Hatful of Hollow is as consistent as The Smiths and arguably captures the excitement surrounding the band even better.

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Two Witches - Agony of the undead vampire

Genere: Pop/Rock.
Style: Goth Rock.
Similar Artists: Miranda Sex Garden, The Wake, Eden.
Recording year: 1992.   

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Cocteau Twins - Head Over Heels

Genere: Pop/Rock.
Style: Alternative, Indie, Post Punk.
Similar artists: Breathless, Curve, Dif Juz.
Recording year: 4AD, 1983.   

A group whose distinctly ethereal and gossamer sound virtually defined the enigmatic image of the record label 4AD, Cocteau Twins were founded in Grangemouth, Scotland, in 1979. Taking their name from an obscure song from fellow Scots Simple Minds, the Cocteaus were originally formed by guitarist Robin Guthrie and bassist Will Heggie and later rounded out by Guthrie's girlfriend Elizabeth Fraser, an utterly unique performer whose swooping, operatic vocals relied less on any recognizable language than on the subjective sounds and textures of verbalized emotions.

In 1982, the trio signed to 4AD, the arty British label then best known as the home of the Birthday Party, whose members helped the Cocteaus win a contract. The group debuted with Garlands, which offered an embryonic taste of their rapidly developing, atmospheric sound, crafted around Guthrie's creative use of distorted guitars, tape loops, and echo boxes and anchored in Heggie's rhythmic bass as well as an omnipresent Roland 808 drum machine. Shortly after the release of the Peppermint Pig EP, Heggie left the group, and Guthrie and Fraser cut 1983's Head Over Heels as a duo; nonetheless, the album largely perfected the Cocteaus' gauzy formula, and established the foundation from which the group would continue to work for the duration of its career.

Head Over Heels. The album introduces a variety of different shadings and approaches to the incipient Cocteaus sound, pointing the band towards the exultant, elegant beauty of later releases. Opening number "When Mama Was Moth" demonstrates the new musical range nicely; Fraser's singing is much more upfront, while Guthrie creates a bewitching mix of dark guitar notes and sparkling keyboard tones, with percussion echoing in the background. Other songs, like the sax-accompanied "Five Ten Fiftyfold" and "The Tinderbox (Of a Heart)" reflect the more elaborate musical melancholy of the group, while still other cuts are downright sprightly. "Multifoiled" in particular is a charm, a jazzily-arranged number that lets Fraser do a bit of scatting (a perfect avenue for her lyrical approach!), while "In the Gold Dust Rush" mixes acoustic guitar drama into Fraser's swooping singing. Perhaps the two strongest numbers of all are: "Sugar Hiccup," mixing the mock choir effect the band would use elsewhere with both a lovely guitar line and singing; and "Musette and Drums," a massive, powerful collision of Guthrie's guitar at its loudest and most powerful and Fraser's singing at its most intense.

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