Markus Reuter and Pat Mastelotto (better known as Tuner) are putting the finishing touches to their new album during the summer. 

Entitled Pole, it will feature special guests including Sirenee (vocals), Peter Kingsbery (vocals) Pamelia Kurstin (theremin) and Laura Scarboro on vibraphone/harmonium, melodica and vocal grunting (Pat’s words not mine folks!)

The boy’s have made a a two minute plus clip available from the new album called Black Well Monotony.

While you’re listening to that why not take time to peruse Tuner’s desert Island Crim. 

Markus Reuter’s Mix

1. VROOOM incl. Coda (from VROOOM EP)
This version captures the piece’s full glory for me. Perfect tempo on this one. It’s as heavy as it gets. It’s composition seems entirely driven by the muse, serving melody. I love the fairy fingers sections and this particular rendition of the ’Coda’, that gets denser and denser gradually.

2.Waiting Man (from Beat)
Funky, tribal, ambient and featuring my favourite vocal part from Adrian.

3. The Great Deceiver (Box Set)
The ultimate statement of that particular configuration of King Crimson. It’s all you need.

4.Discipline (from Absent Lovers)
Unmatched.

5.The League Of Gentlemen (Album)
Strange, strange, strange wonderful music.

6.Level 5 (from The Power To Believe)
This is a ’Best Of’ KC in one piece for me.

7.Nuages (from Three Of A Perfect Pair)
Great melodies, really inventive sounds and an engaging harmonic progression. This one is unique in the KC catalogue, I think.

8.Red (from BBOOM)
Incredible piece of music and a powerful arrangement & performance by the Double Trio.

9.Larks’ Tongues In Aspic, Part 2 (from Absent Lovers)
What power in this then 11+ year old instrumental!  The whole of the ’Absent Lovers’ disc is amazing.

10.THRAKATTAK (Album)
This album still is the future and sets the tone for a potentially future improvised music. Unfortunately not many artists have picked it up from there.

Pat Mastelotto’s Picks

"I dont like doing this list thing : This list is based on today…ask me later and I might have a different one" says Pat.

1- Cat Food (from In The Wake Of Poseidon)
This was the first crimson I ever heard, in a public library. I had no idea who it was but it floored my young self.

2- In The Court of the Crimson King.
The whole record, impossible to pick one track.

Schizoid was the scariest thing I had ever heard up to that time. The middle was beyond my comprehension.  In fact not until about 1995 did I understand how to count it (it’s in 4/4 not 6/8).  Moonchild was, as a strange premonition,  the first song I heard in 1994(?) on a drive home late, late, after a New Years Eve (party or gig). It came on the radio while I was driving.  A few weeks later Robert called  with his double trio idea. 

In the Court of the Crimson King track was so cool to me with all the crazy over the bar drum fills. Interestingly I originally had the recording on an 8 track and the coda (reprise) was not there.  So a year later (while dosed) when I heard the coda kick I thought I had lost (or found) my mind.

3 Larks’ Tongues In Aspic
Again impossible to pick one track.  This entire LP was a masterpiece to my teenaged ears.

4- Great Deceiver (from Starless & Bible Black)
Loved it. Used to put this one on the stereo before high school and get myself all revved up. “Cigarettes ice cream figurines of the Virgin Mary” as I later learned was a Fripp lyric referring to a visit to the Vatican.

5- Starless (from Red).
I first saw Crimson as opener for Ten Years After at the San Francisco Cow Palace and they played this unreleased song.  The long building section was sublime and the bass riff stuck deep in my head. I carried it all the way home and woke the next day humming it over and over to myself.

Then a week or so later I moved to LA , in part to see Crimson again as a headliner- they played Starless again and that bass riff was soooo stuck in my head that I would try to sing it to my band mates so we could jam over it.  I never counted in those days and could never figure out why it was ’hard’ to play! 

About a year laterI  went to Moby Disc Records in the San Fernando valley and saw RED, I bought it and went home and put it on.  I went all goosbumby when half way through side two that riff came on.  

6- One More Red Nightmare (from Red)
The riff , the wah-wah claps, the bass line, and drumfills - all disconnected and yet so groovy. Yes without a doubt K.C and B.B could groove in the wildest ways.

7- Discipline.
Sorry but again the whole record, a cohesive masterpiece - how could you leave anything out? This was a new band and a new sound that was immediately accessible.  I could right a story about every track.

8-Neal and Jack and Me (from Beat)
Great hook . This was a fav at the time and I still find myself waking up singing it in my head. I had no idea what it was about until I met Adrian and learned about Bruford turning him onto the beat poets.

9- Dig Me.(from  Three Of A Perfect Pair )
I don’t know what the song is called, is it dig me?  I just loved the mayhem and then that line ’ dig me, but don’t bury me’. By this time I was in pop bands with hits and nutty little girls chasing us and as these fans fawned over us I was often thinking in the back of my mind  “chill, I’m just a person, stop freaking out on me. .Or, in simpler terms  “dig me but don’t bury me!".

10- I will keep this space open for something still unwritten.

Thank to Markus and Pat for taking the time to take part.  Keep up to date with all things Tuner by visiting their MySpace site.

You can also read my review of their first album, Totem, here.