Nine Rain (1996)

In the mid 90s Nine Rain was founded by Steven Brown in Mexico City, but long before, between 1977 and 1985, this keyboard-player and saxophonist from San Francisco enjoyed cult-status in the USA and Europe with the group Tuxedomoon. At that time the progressive quartet moved with its own sense of identity and style between punk and artistry, electronics and world jazz. After the dissolution of Tuxedomoon, Steven Brown moved to Mexico, to immerse himself in its culture and everyday life. His reputation as an avant-garde pop-pioneer has been reinforced by his playing in Nine Rain. Together with the German electronics' specialist Nikolas Klau and the Mexicans José Manuel Aguilera and Alejandro Herrera, he has been tracing relationships between Latin American grooves and European jazz, underground rock and imaginary film-music.
'In Mexico there's life; there's a lot of soul here, something that one doesn't find in the USA and that's in danger of dying out in Europe,' says Steven Brown on being questioned about the attraction of central America. This well travelled cosmopolitan recalls in an interview with 'The News' from Mexico City: 'I always wanted to escape from the American way of life, so I first went to Europe. But even there, the worst things were taken over from America. In Mexico on the other hand I noticed something unique, a special energy, particularly outside the capital, safeguarding many elements of traditional culture, to stop them being destroyed 'No wonder that Brown soon said 'adios' to the teeming capital and moved to Oaxaca. The more human dimensions of this capital of the synonymous province - with its low, colourful houses, narrow cobbled lanes and colonial churches - is not only attractive to the eye but also has a unique and almost magical aura. Its down-to-earth pulsating life breathes a sovereign detachment and seems to be permeated by the Indians' deep spirituality, which had earlier fascinated Carlos Castaneda.In the mid 90s, Steven Brown was soon an active member of Mexico City's bohemia. He took part in drama- and film-projects and in anti-AIDS and pro-democracy movements. Then he met Alejandro Herrera, who was one of the first people to run a radio station with and for Indians and who played not only the blues' harp but also the brightly toned son-guitar and the calimba. The solo guitarist and second singer José Manuel Aguilera comes likewise from the metropolis. The two of them brought new influences, partly in the form of regional traditions, into Brown's musical cosmos. 'But our way of playing and developing songs has not changed since Tuxedomoon,' said Brown in 1996 on the occasion of Nine Rain's debut album. 'It's still based on improvisation and sessions from which we later choose and develop melodies, bass-lines or loops. The idea behind it is that we play ourselves into a trance, to reach that other world hidden within all of us.

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