Tuxedomoon

This intended side project of the legendary instrumentalist-experimentalist collective began as the soundtrack for a real film these rapacious Belgian-Californian sound collectors are making about the Bardo, the Paris hotel where Brion Gysin and William Burroughs pioneered their cut-up/fold-in writing techniques. But listeners new to Tuxedomoon's Carnivale-esque whirl of found sounds, freighted samples, and created mythologies need not worry about the album's history. Founding member Peter Principle's bass is as lovely and sonorous an anchor as ever, while trumpet player Luc van Lieshout and saxophonist Steve Brown have dispensed with the annoying jazz nuances of 2004's Cabin in the Sky in favor of chamber-flavored virtuosity. Many of the 20 tracks contain the word flying, and Bardo Hotel Soundtrack suggests both weightlessness and motion; it sounds like an orchestra of seraphim, atop a towering nimbus cloud, tuning its instruments and gossiping about the humans below.

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More About

• William S. Burroughs
• Brion Gysin
• Steve Brown
• Luc van Lieshout
• Tuxedomoon