Meltdowner: TD audiences listen to the music, they don't scream "Free Bird"!

 

They did cover "Purple Haze"!  The first time** was on the Rockoon tour, which made it onto album as 220 Volt Live. Overall, it was nowhere near as good as the Optical Race tour, but Edgar's guitar showcase piece "Hamlet" was better than his guitar spotlight in '88.*

 

* = California Theater, San Diego, CA (sadly, this venue was closed)

** = Wiltern Theater, Los Angeles, CA (same place where I saw ELP on the Black Moon tour)

 

Thanks, I'll read that. I just checked your review...the "Quantum Years," eh? Nice that Ed wants to head into adventurous territ'ry again, but this again reminds me of what he said circa the late 1980s. Actually, I heard of TWO strange things back then, neither of which came to be:

 

1) A fan asked Edgar point-blank after a concert on the 1988 tour if Tangerine Dream was going to "end" soon, i.e. was Edgar going to disband TD? His answer was yes. (Based purely on hearsay, but as we know, exactly the opposite happened as TD churned out albums like a conveyor beginning not long after.)

 

2) Edgar said in a print interview that TD was heading into sonic territory (via advanced synthesizer/sampling technology that only they would have hands on, or whatever) of which other bands and musicians of their ilk would have extreme difficulty tailing them...

 

...okay, that was a load, because Optical Race turned out to be the last album in a great run in which every album sounded almost completely different thematically, compositionally and electronically from the last. Without Chris Franke's stunning sound library, TD sounded like they chose to work with presets caked with delays and reverbs. The collective sound of Lily on the Beach, Melrose, Rockoon, and Turn of the Tides was homogenized and extraordinarily underwhelming. Tyranny of Beauty was a step back in the right direction, but Goblins' Club effectively took them off "autobuy" status for me.

 

How much in the way of "new sounds" are present on Sorcerer 2014? The original album has such a distinct quality that I'm not exactly anticipating a new version of it.

 

The Booster series is pretty good. There's a good deal of filler, but I'd also check out Booster II and III. The link below might also lead to a selection of Tangerine Dream compilations and soundtracks.

Have to admit, that looks absolutely brilliant. I would've loved to see that. Thanks for making me feel so jealous (yet again).

Anyways, very nice pics and stories here Michael. Kangaroo the PA correspondant

Btw I haven't been too impressed with the latest couple of TD albums - make that most of what Froese has been dishing out the past 20 years (A good long vacation and some weed might do him some good methinks), but I'm seriously thinking about buying that Sorcerer 2014 release.

These are surprisingly good! Thanks for posting them. Btw, is that Edgar playing guitar on "Crash" or is it Zlatko/Gerald/Thorsten?

 

 

I hope this makes it to DVD ... I miss it all already and I saw TD 4 times!

Yes I know, I'm a hard man to please It would be a fair bit easier for Froese and co if they hadn't already released soooo many albums, but they have -and when the sound and feel of the music 99% of the time is knitted in with the classic 80s 90s TD melodic synth work, it gets harder and harder to distinguish between eras, albums and tracks....at least it is for this puppy.

Sorry Kangaroo, I know you dig this and why shouldn't you? I guess I'm too picky...

 

Most TD after Chris Franke's departure in '87 seems to suffer for lack of compositional diversity. More chances were taken in '70-'87 but particularly on albums like Force Majeure, Tangram, Exit, White Eagle (etcetera) where individual sections within longer pieces/suites were so varied yet seamless. Merge the edge they had back then to the sounds of the day, which IMO were the best they ever employed (especially when Johannes was in there), and TD essentially becomes their own hardest act to follow.

 

And yes, none of the rip-off acts have ever been able to approximate the goodness found on any of the albums above, nor the concurrent live albums, though Arc's Fracture is one superb elaboration on the Rubycon sound.

Haven't heard that Arc album, but a few Berlin School resurrection releases that really connects with me. Steve Moore's Light Echoes from 2012 is certainly one of them. Another would be Free System Project's Pointless Reminder. Again, nothing new under the sun, but the music is just so damn effective!

With modern TD I feel they can do anything. Heck Froese practically influenced most of the styles he's been incorporating into the mix since the start of the 80s, so his palette should be big enough to branch out beyond the norm.....I just feel that he doesn't. Maybe he's too caught up in it to see or hear or feel it. I'm not sure, but as I've said oh so many times before, the man needs a break or something new to inspire him. I know he gets all these ideas from ancient civilisations and old myths, but if those ideas don't receive an equally fresh and perhaps most importantly DISTINCT sound of their own, it then very quickly turns into this perpetual synth soup with little if anything remotely unique about it.....and that is a shame I feel, especially when talking about one of the greatest wizards behind the keys.

 

The funny thing is that one of my all-time favorite TD albums (was my #1 for many years), Force Majeure, is the duo of Froese and Franke with Klaus Krieger on drums, held over from the unique quartet formation of F/F/K with flute/voice man Steve Jolliffe (he himself being a former TD member). Or you can call them a trio, since there are three.

 

Force Majeure is an incredibly diverse album in TD's discography. It's the third and final album in what I call their "progressive rock" phase that started with Stratosfear. These albums have so much guitar (and some bass) and keyboard sounds that are not synthesizers — plus real drums — that they're keyboard-based prog, they're not "electronic" albums per se. (That phase was re-ignited with the assimilation of wunderkind Johannes Schmoelling on Quichotte aka Pergamon.) Heck, there's even a section of "Force Majeure" that reminds me of Neu! With Stuntman released the same year in 1979, Edgar was in top form as composer/melodist/instrumentalist. And we even got another sequenzer tour-de-force in "Thru Metamorphic Rock" (following the first few minutes with Ed's crafty guitar solo that Michael Mann used for Thief).

 

I do love Alpha Centauri, Green Desert, Phaedra and Rubycon. The spectral sound of those albums was something TD did best. As we know, many emulators, but too few who could really match it.

 

With the Schmoelling era, their synthesizer sound technology peaked and so did the quality of their sounds. The only time the compositions and sounds seems to lack a little something was on Hyperborea. "Sphinx Lightning" sounds unfinished. "Cinnamon Road" is a nice ditty but nothing spectacular. The standout is the beautiful title piece, which is probably one of the best things TD ever recorded.

I do like Hyperborea and that title track indeed is mesmerising. S'got a "shimmery" quality to it that I really dig.

I don't remember which famous musician once uttered this, but I am also very partial to the 'silences' in music. The room you leave open to breathe. I think that is another way of relegating the kind of "feel" that I think went missing up through the 80s and 90s with TD. I guess it got swapped for the exploration of the new synths and as you rightly point out: the compositions. Again, it's down to taste

 

Once Schmoelling left is when the idea of "overpopulating" compositions with all sorts of sounds/FX started simmering, IMO. There were sonics to spare with Johannes, but they knew when to build up and break down. The last sections of "Tangram Set 2" and the cerebral space of "Remote Viewing," for example. The second-to-last part of "Tangram Set 2" isn't unlike something Vangelis would have done on Blade Runner. Schmoelling was the right man to complete the band.

 

Underwater Sunlight is the last album that sports the qualities I loved their music for: the wistful if not somber melodies juxtaposed with jubilance, the sense of mystery, etc. Even if that album ushered in a penchant for All Things Digital (and sampled guitar, not real), the compositions were superb.

 

Two albums later, Optical Race got some of it right but in hindsight comes off half-assed. Good tracks: "Marakesh," "Mothers of Rain," "Cat Scan," "Sungate," (most of) "The Midnight Trail." The rest was disposable.

 

Then came Lily on the Beach with a few flashes of the TD I knew, but with Melrose, I knew something was...wrong.  

Funny how we hear music differently. I mean that in a good way. The manner in which you talk about Tangram makes me think of Atem ...but I know where you're coming from and I can detect what you're hinting at in the music. The few albums I really dig with the new sound that came with Tangram and Exit are actually two live releases. Quichotte and Logos. That may have something to do with both of them having one foot planted in the TD of old with loooong brooding pieces where those 'silences' are allowed to breathe if you will. Together with the highly melodic discourse of the surrounding piano, keys and synthesisers it just kinda works for me. 

Then again, all this talk of TD in the early 80s makes me want to revisit the hell out of Exit, Tangram, Hyperborea, White Eagle and Underwater Sunlight. Gotta say, Underwater Sunlight is an album I haven't heard in years. I remember it having some of the most horrendous sounding synths I'd ever heard in my life I might feel differently today though(I actually might - some of the stuff I'm digging at the moment is so incredibly far removed from my younger self's musical inclinations that it simply defies belief. I certainly wouldn't have believed you if you told me at 25 that I'd been majorly into space disco at 32).

Quichotte aka Pergamon is stellar. JS' first 'official' appearance, with that beautiful piano arrangement. Parts of the album were remixed for Wavelength, while some of Logos reappears on The Keep. Just about anything done while Johannes was in the band is golden, IMO. I just have an issue with certain elements of Hyperborea which I think could have been better.

 

Firestarter is essentially an original TD album. It's loaded with music found nowhere else.

Guldbamsen wrote: Then again, all this talk of TD in the early 80s makes me want to revisit the hell out of Exit, Tangram, Hyperborea, White Eagle and Underwater Sunlight.

 

Exit is sublime from beginning to end, IMO. In fact, something I don't usually do is listen to all these albums we're talking about in sequence, which I was doing yesterday, save for White Eagle. I hadn't done that in a LONG time. I think I'm going to put on Stratosfear pretty soon.

 

Guldbamsen wrote: Gotta say, Underwater Sunlight is an album I haven't heard in years. I remember it having some of the most horrendous sounding synths I'd ever heard in my life

 

The sounds are starkly digital. Compared to the analog gear they wielded up through '83, it's night and day. The integrity of the compositions overcome this, though.

 

Guldbamsen wrote: I might feel differently today though (I actually might - some of the stuff I'm digging at the moment is so incredibly far removed from my younger self's musical inclinations that it simply defies belief. I certainly wouldn't have believed you if you told me at 25 that I'd been majorly into space disco at 32).

 

Would you believe me if I told you I knew a guy 20+ years ago who listened to TD and nothing else? I tried to throw some Mark Shreeve at him, but if it wasn't TD or a TD alumnus, he wasn't interested.

 

One thing we can all agree on: Tangerine Dream will certainly never produce anything of this sort again.