Blaine L. Reininger

Blaine L. Reininger

interview by Matteo Meda
After 20 years of great music and no solo gigs, this year you've chosen to return to stage. Can I just ask which forces brought you to this decision?
Of course, I have been performing with one thing or another non-stop the last 40 years. It's just that I haven't done the solo thing for a while. When I started working with my new agent in Belgium, Pieter de Clercq, he found some dates for me solo. That's it.

This new solo tour is not a solo tour at at all: you're sharing the stage with Georgio Valentino, a man who's followed an opposite path somewhat, compared to you. Many live shows and very few discographic works. How was your relationship and partnership born? Where do you find artistic correspondances (or contrasts) between your approach and sound and his ones?
Georgio introduced himself to me online, first in his role as a journalist for a Belgian magazine and later as a musician. He visited me in Athens to work with me on one of his songs. I liked him a lot, found him a funny guy and we worked well musically. I played several times as a guest of his band, playing in Belgium, France, and Holland. In 2014 I was invited to do a special show for some friends in Amsterdam and so invited him along. It worked out well. Then Pieter started finding us some dates around Europe. We will even play Hong Kong later this month.

I saw in some videos that you've reached a particular sinergy on stage. You're usually jumping from guitar to violin, while he is doing lots of different sounds and numbers with his 12 strings guitar. Can you explain what kind of instrumental dialogue you have set up?
I am not actually playing keyboards on stage with this line up. I have recorded the synthesizers and rhythms and use my laptop. I have successfully adapted most of my classic numbers to guitar, even though they were originally composed for keyboard. The violin is always there, as it must be. George has added his 12 string guitar nicely to the arrangements.

And what about the setlist? It seems it's a melange of everything you've done in your careers, that brings to a very heterogeneous set. Did you choose the tracks together? How do you manage to have the right technical set to play so many different kinds of sounds?
Yes, the set is composed of a survey of my career, with and without tuxedomoon. This instrumentation has been working well. I am pleased with it. We do a couple of Georgio's songs as well. 5. You've started this new tour as you've ended up your last one with Tuxedomoon, following the release of "Pink Narcissus".

After 35 years of career, what do those different experiences represent for your art in 2015? What tiles of your "puzzle" do you feel you've just collected in those last 4 years?
I am happy to feel that I continue to learn new things, that new artistic paths reveal themselves to me in my work, even at my age. Perhaps especially at my age. Feeling that one has matured in one's art, feeling more capable rather than less, figuring out one or two things, these are the rewards of surviving to maturity.

I noted you've never give up playing some "old" glorious tracks in your concerts. Many musicians coming from your age don't do the same, and they often try to centre their gigs on their last and most recent projects. Or sometimes they play old stuff just to let the audience enjoy the show. What is in 2015 your relationship with the music you made in 80s, both on solo projects and with the band?
I like to include what I can of my newer things, though few of them adapt well to live performance. There is, I think, a joy in performing an old song that reveals new depths over time. It is also a way to judge one's own passage through time, how you have held up, how you have changed, what you have learned. I also know that many people who come to see someone they have known for a long time are disappointed if they only play new material.

A quick-list questions to conclude: after the last collection of "Commissions", are you working on any new project? Do you think Tuxedomoon's experience will go on on the path of "Pink Narcissus" with new projects in the next years? Any chance of a studio album from you and Georgio?
There are plans within plans. I continue to work all the time, every day on my own material. What happens to it remains to be seen. I just finished working in Switzerland on a very cool video project called “Angels”. I would like to release that music. Tuxedomoon plans to get together next year to write new material. We are also planning a tour wherin we play our album “Half Mute” in its entirety. As to what happens with Georgio, who can tell?
Discography
 TUXEDOMOON
  
 CD & LP
  
Half Mute (Ralph, 1980)
 Joeboy In Rotterdam / Joeboy In San Francisco (as Joeboy, split with Winston Tong, Backstreet Blackash, 1981)
Desire (Ralph, 1981)
Divine (soundtrack, Operation Twilight / Le Disque Du Crepuscule, 1982)
 Holy Wars (Cramboy, 1985)
 Ship Of Fools (Cramboy, 1986)
 You (Cramboy, 1987)
Pinheads On The Move (raccolta, Cramboy, 1987)
 Ten Years In One Night (Live) (live, Play-Boy, 1989)
 The Ghost Sonata (soundtrack, LTM, 1991)
 Joeboy In Mexico (as Joeboy, Opción Sónica, 1997)
Live In St. Petersburg (live, Neo Acustica, 2001)
Soundtrack / Urban Leisure (raccolta, LTM, 2002)
 Cabin In The Sky (Cramboy, 2004)
 Bardo Hotel (soundtrack, Made To Measure / Crammed, 2006)
 Vapour Trails (Cramboy, 2007)
Unhearted - Lost Chords + Found Films (raccolta, Cramboy, 2011)
At Twilight (raccolta, Les Disques Du Crépuscule, 2013)
Pink Narcissus (Crammed, 2014)
  
 EP, 12", 7" (elenco parziale)
  
 Joeboy (Joeboy... The Electronic Ghost) (Tidal Wave, 1978)
 No Tears (Time Release, 1978)
Scream With A View - EP2 (Time Release, 1979)
 Strange (with Winston Tong, Time Release, 1979)
Suite En Sous-Soul (2x12"Expanded, 1982)
 Time To Loose / Blind (Les Disques Du Crépuscule, 1982)
 Short Stories: The Cage - This Beast (Les Disques Du Crépuscule, 1983)
  
 ANTOLOGIE & DVD
  
A Thousand Lives By Picture (Ralph, 1983)
 Tales From A New World (Music-Box, 1984)
 Solve Et Coagula - The Best Of (Cramboy, 1991)
 Seismic Riffs (Docu-DVD, Crammed, 2004)
 The Super 8 Years With Tuxedomoon (Docu-DVD, Transparency, 2007)
  
 BLAINE L. REININGER
  
Broken Fingers (Les Disques Du Crépuscule, 1982)
Night Air (Another Side, 1984)
 Live In Brussels 02/1986 (live, Les Disques Du Crépuscule, 1986)
 Byzantium (Les Disques Du Crépuscule, 1987)
 Instrumentals 1982-86 (Interior Music, 1987)
 Book Of Hours (Les Disques Du Crépuscule, 1989)
 Expatriate Journalists (antologia, Giant, 1989)
 Songs From The Rain Palace (Les Disques Du Crépuscule, 1990)
 Brussels/USA The Best Of Blaine L. Reininger, Vol.1 (antologia, Les Disques Du Crépuscule, 1994)
 Radio Moscow (soundtrack, Polydor, 1995)
 Manic Man (soundtrack, Ankh, 1997)
 The More I Learn The Less I Know (FM, 2000)
 Night Air 2 (raccolta, LTM, 2004)
Glossolalia (Off, 2007)
 Elektra / Radio Moscow: Soundtracks (2xCD, LTM, 2007)
 Music For Dance And Theatre (raccolta MP3, Autoprodotto, 2011)
 Electric Girl (soundtrack, MP3, Autoprodotto, 2011)
Commissions (raccolta, Crammed, 2014)
  
 BLAINE L. REININGER & STEVEN BROWN
  
1890 - 1990: One Hundred Years Of Music (raccolta, Les Disques Du Crépuscule, 1990)
 Croatian Variations (Materiali Sonori, 1992)
 Flower Songs (Independent, 2006)

Clear Tears | Troubled Waters (with Max Bodson, Crammed, 2013)
  
 ALTRE COLLABORAZIONI
  
 Colorado Suite (with Mikel Rouse, Crammed, 1984)
Paris En Automne (with Alain Goutier, Les Disques Du Crépuscule, 1985)
Sun And Rain (with Gianluca Lo Presti, Materiali Musicali, 2001)
 Uneasy Listening - An Unofficial Beta Version Of Random Madness And Other Delights (with Coti K., Neo Acustica, 2004)
 The Hamburg Sessions (with William Lee Self, Still, 2012)
  
 

UVOII aka FALLING INFINITIES
(Amir Abadi, Blaine L. Reininger, Ingo Schnorrenberg & Michael Pagenstedt)

  
 Sound Of Heaven (Fax +49-69/450464, 1994)
 Kingdom Of Dreams (Dance Pool, 1996)
milestone of OndaRock
recommended by OndaRock