Tuxedomoon never really died? or even faded away. After enjoying considerable success in Europe? where they had relocated from San Francisco in 1981? during the '80s, the avant-garde avatars simply took it easy, working on various solo projects and playing the occasional festival date as a band. Just as 2004's Cabin in the Sky (their first record since 1987's You) and 2006's Bardo Hotel soundtrack marked their return to post-everything form, Vapour Trails signals their renewed involvement in the incidental music they've been making on and off since 1978.
Vapour Trails was composed while being recorded in a series of sessions between the Acropolis and the pilgrim road to the Elysian fields in Athens. Members Steven Brown, Peter Principle, Blaine L. Reininger and Luc van Lieshout load their eclectic pallet with a wide and surprising variety of styles and influences, and sing in the languages of the many places they have lived or visited, singing this time not only in English, but also in Greek and Spanish.
'Big Olive' is a foreboding and body of music sung in Greek set against jazz and punk soundscapes. 'Dark Temple' exudes a real meditative cool seemingly influenced by Miles Davis' In a Silent Way and Miles Smiles. 'Epso Meth Lama' is a heady fusion of synth-pop and sound collage.
For all the group's cerebral intentions, the compositions come off as fairly tame, if lovely, background music. The songs are largely vocal and atmospheric, mixing such disparate elements as improvisational jazz, experimentalism and the band's own peculiar brand of post-punk noir. The group is owed some serious respect because Vapour Trails, a sprawling soundscape of droning ambience and austere chamber dub, is irrefutable proof that Tuxedomoon has never given up its exploration of music's outer fringes. |