Phideaux Xavier

Phideaux Xavier (born Scott Riggs; January 14, 1963) is an American television director, and composer of modern technological music that he describes as 'psychedelic progressive gothic rock', who grew up near New York City but now lives in Los Angeles.

Phideaux was born Scott Riggs on January 14, 1963 in Hastings-on-Hudson, one of three children. He started composing music in high school.

Phideaux first played with Mark Sherkus (piano), Dean Deluke (drums), and Bucky Deluke (trumpet) in ESP. He was later part of a band called the Delukes from Southern California. Next, Xavier played with Molly Ruttan (drums), Linda Ruttan-Moldawsky (bass) and Amanda Ettlinger (flute) in a progressive rock band called Mirkwood, which later morphed into a punk/pop band called Sally Dick & Jane, after the departure of Amanda Ettlinger, and the addition of vocalist/keyboardist Valerie Gracius. They played at various legendary NYC clubs, including Max's Kansas City and CBGB, during the early to mid 1980s, but failed to record anything of substance and were marginal to the scene.

After Sally Dick & Jane ended, Phideaux worked on music alone as a one-man recording project. He attended school at New York University for film and television production. After graduating from college, Phideaux decided to return to the collaborative aspect of music and formed an acoustic-themed band called The SunMachine with childhood friend Ariel Farber (violin/vocals) and various other musicians. They played a mostly acoustic progressive rock style music with flutes, violin, keyboards, percussion, 12-string guitar, and electric bass. It was during this time in 1992 that the first "official" (though now deleted) album, Friction, was recorded.

Friction involved The SunMachine, but also included collaborations with other people, including the former members of Sally Dick & Jane. There were several tracks which were done by Phideaux himself, and many tracks included synthesizer and MIDI music. This album, despite lacking worldwide distribution, was met with a lukewarm response from audiences and it has since been deleted, remanded to status of "ambitious demo".

After a few aborted SunMachine recording sessions, the band ended in 1994 when Phideaux met former Live Skull drummer Rich Hutchins. They began to rehearse music together and both played in a band called Satyricon (not to be confused with the Norwegian black metal band of the same name). During that time, they started rehearsing the songs that became Ghost Story, and developed a working relationship; however, no suitable recordings of Ghost Story were made, and Phideaux left NYC for work in Los Angeles.

In 2002, Phideaux began to work with Gabriel Moffat, Molly Ruttan's husband, on a series of new demos. He got back together with Rich Hutchins and recorded the album Fiendish. In the producer chair was Mark Kramer, known to Phideaux for his work with Bongwater, Brainville (with Daevid Allen, Pip Pyle and Hugh Hopper) and the Danielson Family. Fiendish was "progressive space folk", according to Phideaux, and contained 11 mid-length songs. The longest track, "Soundblast", took its lyrics from a leaflet dropped over Japan shortly after the detonation of the Little Boy atomic bomb at Hiroshima. This album was released in 2003, despite the copyright of 2004 on the artwork.

After completing Fiendish, Xavier was convinced that he was now prepared to record his songs from the aborted album Ghost Story. He and Hutchins quickly reconvened to redo that album with Gabriel Moffat producing and mixing. Ghost Story was released in 2004. The track "Beyond The Shadow of Doubt" features a keyboard solo from Mark Sherkus, who joined the project at that time. Sam Fenster, who had played bass in The SunMachine, played bass in the album.