Tuxedomoon
No Tears

Tuxedomoon thrived on contradictions, Americans from San Francisco, yet European in their sonic influences and adopted Europeans in their exile to central Europe in the early '80s, the bulk of their loyal following back then could be found precisely on the old continent. Contradictions, therefore, like those present in their sound, electronic and acoustic, classical and modernist, Tuxedomoon was a band ahead of their time or perhaps outside of any time, beyond any definition. An extraordinary artistic journey, peaking with two milestones like "Half-Mute" and "Desire," supreme examples of "total" music translated into post-punk styles brimming with personality, pathos, and ingenious inventiveness, the first "true" step of the band towards future directions was the EP "No Tears," released in 1978 after a debut single still unsure of the path to take.

Four tracks that showcase a band that has found its unique personality, avant-garde in the use of instrumentation and the creation of decadent soundscapes, radiating noir atmospheres sometimes laden with lyricism, and at times immersed in obsessive tensions, "New Machine" will set the standard: a synthetic rhythmic carpet supports changing electronic sound architectures, the sounds become solemn, enough to evoke certain Kraftwerkian atmospheres, (and not less echoes of classical European culture), all immersed in an extraordinary electronic dance in pure post-punk thrill, cloaked in black by vocals lost in the void. It's with the following "Litebulb Overkill" that Tuxedomoon forges the first of their perfect mixtures between classical-chamber sounds and minimal electronics, an instrumental where synthetic inlays become thin and oblique, Reininger's wonderful violin thus soars in all its beauty among intoxicating aerial evolutions on gray and disorienting landscapes, the creativity of these ingenious multi-instrumentalists from their earliest days is disruptive and unique and will continue throughout the remaining '70s with another EP ("Scream With A View") and a single ("The Stranger - Love / No Hope") all marked by a dark spirit and increasingly brilliantly avant-garde. The homage to Cole Porter in the revisitation of the classic "Nite And Day (Hommage A Cole Porter)" indeed, transfigures and annihilates the Porter classic into a ritual of obsession and delirium, with Winston Tong's vocal litanies now tense, now desperate, soaring among the electronic synth mantras and mechanical rhythmic pulses, the only thread that ties it to the original version are the lyrics, but here the words seem to lose all meaning, or perhaps gain a new one, no longer a lover thinking about his beloved, but a condemned to imprisonment by an obsession, a fixed thought that becomes suffocating, a mental isolation before physical, with the phrases "Day And Night, Night And Day, I Think Of You, In The Silence Of My Lonely Room" repeated to exhaustion, at times shouted by a Winston Tong at one of his interpretative peaks.

The title-track has the task of putting an end to the work, a classic of the entire new wave, one of the best moments of Tuxedomoon's entire career, the pounding rhythms are grafted onto crepuscular electronic harmonies, decadent, all-encompassing, pierced by Tong's hysterical and desperate singing, which among marble and shadowy sinuous and dark instrumental passages, revives the creatures of the night, the same for whom there are no more tears. "no tears for the creatures of the night, no tears, my eyes are dry, goodbye, I feel so sad, but I can't understand, nothing goes as I had planned, my head is exploding and my mouth is dry, there's nothing I can do if I've forgotten how to cry, no tears for the creatures of the night, no tears, my eyes are dry, goodbye, my eyes are dry."