SORCERER (OST)

TANGERINE DREAM's first foray in to film scoring. This was the soundtrack to William Friedkin's Sorcerer, which was a remake of an old movie called Wages of Fear. Apparently Friedkin was a big fan of prog rock and electronic music and had he knew of TANGERINE DREAM back in 1973, he would have used them for his best-known film, The Exorcist, but instead he used MIKE OLDFIELD, whose "Tubular Bells" gave him wide exposure, no doubt helped by the beginning part of the album used for the film.

I had seen Sorcerer, and I thought it was a particularly boring film, the only thing really sticking out was the heavy monsoons pouring in the Central American jungle as these trucks haul explosives over dangerous territory.

Given this was a soundtrack, the band went for much shorter compositions, in the 2-3 minute range, for the most part, but it proved TANGERINE DREAM was still able to float within the time constraints. No side-length epics here. "Main Title" is a truly bizarre experimental piece that harkens back to the old stuff they did when they were with Ohr, only this time on synthesizers rather than glissando guitars and VCS-3 synth effects. Most of the rest relies on sequencers with lots of synthesizers and Mellotron. Some of them sound like unfinished pieces, but worked in context to the film. After watching the film, I discovered only about half of the album's 12 songs were used in the film. I understand the band was less than pleased how their music was used in the film, but then the band never saw the film when they did the soundtrack.

I wouldn't call this their best '70s effort, but at least it's still a lot better than the crap they've been giving us in the last 20 or so years.