DREAM & DESIRE

Dream and Desire is half a great album, and well worth tracking down if you're a fan of Tangerine Dream and Klaus Schulze. Although only released in 1991, it was recorded in 1977 and is contemporary with and stylistically similar to the brilliant New Age of Earth and Blackouts.

The opening track, Dream, is 30 minutes of Gottsching doing what he did so well at the time, building up a hypnotic and delicately textured piece from synths and guitar. Anybody who loves Midnight on Mars (from Blackouts) will cherish this lenghty exploration of similar ideas. It's not dissimilar to some of the 30 minute epics Klaus Schulze was laying down at the same time on albums like Timewind, but with extra guitar. The piece constantly unfolds and develops in a pleasingly low key manner, and Gottsching's guitar has rarely sounded sweeter. A beautiful soundtrack for contemplation of the cosmos.

The next piece starts promisingly enough - Desire is built around the kind of sequencer rhythm that Tangerine Dream used on albums like Rubycon. Once it starts it goes on, and on, and on, never varying in either tone or tempo until the piece comes to a welcome close. This track could have used some severe editing - the fact that the sequencer setting never seems to change soon becoems irritating.

The closing track is a glimpse of what Desire could have been - Despair is based on a similar rhythm track, but at eight and a half minutes it doesn't out stay its welcome.

Programme your CD to play tracks 1 and 3 and you've got a respectable 39 minutes of mid 70s German electronica by a master of the form at the top of his game. If Desire had been better ealised, this could have been an album on a par with the immaculate New Age of Earth, as it is it's a worthy but flawed addition to Gottsching's back catalogue.