Chimes and Chains

Tangerine Dream

ATEM (1973)

Track List:  Atem  |  Fauni-Gena  |  Circulation Of Events  |  Wahn

The first album of the famous Froese/Franke/Baumann trio, and the last album on the Ohr label.  Also, their last album without the use of sequencers, as far as I know.

Atem:

The heavy use of drums - which took a brief departure on Zeit - is back in full force on this track, at least, in the beginning of the piece.  The track starts out with more structure and melody (again, using “melody” in a very loose sense), but after about 5 minutes in, the drumming and synth work build to a bit of cacophony before cutting out entirely around the 6 minute mark, where it goes back to a somewhat discordant spacy ambience.  This ambience ebbs and flows for several minutes.  The music takes a slightly ominous turn after 14+ minutes in, with the help of a lower-register synth or organ drone applied, and then that drone migrates to a slow minor-key phrase over the next few minutes.  At 17+ minutes, the drone drops out for a bit, it gets spacier, and a white-noise-ish rhythm comes in, and then the drone reappears.  Kind of a dark piece, in my mind – moody and a little spooky.  I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Fauni-Gena:

What strikes me almost immediately is the flute-like sound in the front of the mix.  It’s a distinctive sound/mood Tangerine Dream will continue to use for several years forward.  Synthesizer “bird” noises arrive in the background, along with some faint and sparse whispered voice noises.  A rhythmic low-register undertone begins around the 6 minute mark, helping the whole piece to… I don’t know how to put it – “burble” a bit more.  That low rhythm makes a more pronounced appearance in the last minute of the track, an almost sequencer-like groove.  Overall, a good piece, and fits in nicely with the mood of the first track.

Circulation Of Events:

This one remains in the same slightly discordant, ominous mood as the previous piece.  A cool, rhythmic pulsating organ & synth begins around the 4 minute mark.  It’s too bad that the piece ends only a minute or two later, I felt like it should’ve been longer.

Wahn:

Multiple weird processed voices start this one out.  The bizarre intro hearkens back a bit more to the style of Electronic Mediation.  The voices are joined by drum hits with some kind of delay on them.  The synth doesn’t make its entry until 2 minutes in, but the drums keep going throughout.  The distinctive flute-like sound mentioned in Fauni-Gena returns briefly to close out the piece.

Some thoughts on this re-listening:  Yeah, it’s definitely a good album (if you like weird, experimental electronic music, LOL - I wouldn't play it at a party).  I like the dark, overall mood of it, but I enjoyed Zeit more.

Tangerine Dream

ZEIT (1972)

Track list:  Birth Of Liquid Plejades  |  Nebulous Dawn  |  Origin Of Supernatural Probabilities  |  Zeit

“Zeit” was another TD album I purchased around ’81 or ’82 - a “special order” from Europe - and I had ordered both “Zeit” and “Alpha Centauri/Atem” at the same time (paying about $20.00 for each) which at that time seemed astronomical since LPs typically ranged from around $7.00 for a standard LP and maybe $10 or $12 for a double LP.

As an aside, I lived in Taiwan from 1977 to 1980 and the pirated albums there sold for the equivalent of $0.18 USD.  I built a huge LP and cassette collection from my years living in Taiwan, and every summer from ’81 to ’84 I’d go back there for a month to visit my dad.  The last trip (’84) I actually got harassed by Customs because I had so many LPs that they thought I was re-selling them in the US.  I was taken to some office in the airport and had to explain to these Customs officers that they were for my own personal collection; that I was just a music buff.

In the early 1980’s when I was in high school back in the USA 99.9% of my peers and friends had no clue who Tangerine Dream was.  Everyone was listening to Van Halen, Rush, Scorpions, AC/DC, Queen, Loverboy, The B-52’s, Talking Heads, Duran Duran, The Police, U2, or whatever.  The radio stuff.  The “New Wave” was in full swing.  Bright colors, shoulder pads, big hair, skinny ties, and androgyny was all the rage.  Running concurrent with the “New Wave” music was the increasing popularity with “New Age” music, and that was often where one could find interesting electronic (and acoustic) music.  I remember reading an interview decades ago with Edgar Froese where they asked him about the frequent labeling of Tangerine Dream’s music as “New Age.”  I can’t remember his exact words, but he said something like “We view things from a very high tower, and we don’t see this ‘new age’ anywhere.”  It cracked me up.

10-8-2021  |  Listening state of mind:  Calm & sober, and ready to don the headphones for an uninterrupted serious listening of this epic, generally well-respected double album.

ZEIT – I cannot separate the pieces to comment on them.  (Well, I can, but I won’t.)  Personally, I think this is a special album, and the 4 different tracks all belong together, and create a “whole” experience after listening.  I feel enveloped by all of it.  The tracks can stand by themselves, for sure… and each are distinctly different, but it just seems to me that they need to be taken as a whole – that the sum is greater than the parts, and that something is “lost” when they are separated and analyzed too deeply.

What comes to my mind as I listen?  “Minimalist.”  “Classical.”  “Encompassing.”  “Meditative.”  The album is aptly titled; a sense of… long passages of time, eons, evolution… things like this come to my mind.  Harmony, discord, complexity, simplicity, integration, disintegration, growth, decay, the material and the immaterial… it’s all here.  A very evocative album.

I rescind my earlier comment about “Alpha Centauri” being my favorite of the 4 early experimental studio albums.  “Zeit” is far better and more… mature.  And I’m looking forward to listening to “Atem” - but it won’t be today.  I feel an afterglow effect with “Zeit,” and I want to carry it with me for the rest of the day (or make a good attempt to, anyway).

Tangerine Dream

OSZILLATOR PLANET CONCERT (1971)

This 8+ minute piece came from an album called “Ossiach Live.”  I never had this album; my copy of O.P.C. comes from the aforementioned TD bootleg, “Electronic Orgy.”

10-7-2021  |  Listening state of mind:  Still recuperating from listening to that cheesy new “Yes” album.  And I’m incredibly hungry… haven’t eaten all day.  But I have a giant plate of homemade spaghetti in front of me, which I plan on horfing down while I listen to this.

Oszillator Planet Concert:

The first 5+ minutes have no guitar, and no other instruments than synth & organ, that I can tell.  Some guitar notes are finally plucked & bent, starting at the 5.5 minute mark of this mostly formless and ambient piece.  A minute or so later, a lower-register guitar comes in with a slow, methodical note progression which changes key back and forth until the end.  There are moments that remind me of the title track of Alpha Centauri, but this is mellower.

Some brief thoughts after this re-listening:  It’s another interesting historical nugget in their early material, but that’s as far as I can go.  The piece doesn’t offend my ears, but I don’t ever foresee myself saying, “Hey – I’m in the mood for Oszillator Planet Concert!”  My spaghetti, on the other hand, was absolute dynamite!