STUNTMAN

More accessible than the previous Froese's efforts and more orientated to soft, mainstream synth music, Stuntman is a recommended album for those who want to spend a relaxing moment throw a spacey, atmospheric musical journey. The electronic material used by Froese is dominated by analog synth, rejecting Mellotron and other vintage keyboards, electric organs. The opening track of the album is built around a slightly rythmical sequencer part with gorgeous synth melodies...the best tune is Drunken Mozart in the Desert, a quite emotional composition with etheral and ambient synth arrengements. However this album can easily disconcert the Tangerine Dream and Froese's fans from the first hours...it's not pre electronic music with an experimental bent but soft ambiant electronic music.

This is one of the most helium-boosted electronic albums I have ever heard, maybe with the Tangerine Dream's "Tangram" album! Actually, this record surely gave the perfect pace for the new orientation of the Tangerine Dream's sound of the early 80's, immortalized with the arrival of "Tangram". Many floating keyboards and electric guitar solos are obviously reminiscent of the "Force Majeure" album. Absolutely DYNAMIC & progressive New Age not suited for relaxation, this record is the best of the Froese's albums. Needless to say "Stuntman" has numerous similitudes with the "Tangram" album. Shall I add "Stuntman" has some of the Jean Michel Jarre's elements, especially on his 2 first albums "Equinoxe" and "Oxygene", like the ultra slow wah-wah effect applied on the VERY intensely floating streams of keyboards, or like the very melodic & floating keyboards arrangements for instance on the last part of "Drunken Mozart in the desert". I like the violent & sustained bottom peak + highly floating keyboards in the debut of "Dali-esque sleep fuse": this is the REAL "Tangram" sound! Notice on this track the impressive helicopter emulation! All the tracks are excellent!

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!

Stuntman is a good album from the frontman of Tangerine Dream. It was 1979 too so in many ways a brave release from Edgar Froese just prior to the bands epic ' Tangram' album.From the opening bubbly ' Stuntman ' to the wonderfully serene ' It would be like Samoa' the album kicks off in style. ' Detroit Snackbar Dreamer' is just perfect in depicting a late night ambient cruise down through ' Industria'. Perfect hooks and great spatial balance.

Side two of the vinyl starts with the wall of sound know as ' Drunken Mozart In The Desert' 10 minutes of pure TD references more reminisent of ' Force Majeaure' compositions. The last two tracks play out in a similar vein but personally ' a dali-esque sleep fuse' encapsulate everything this good album has to offer. Recommended to all true TD fans as this holds itself up as a really good solo effort.3 and a half stars would be more accurate.

Stuntman is Edgar Froese moving towards a poppier synth sound, and is almost pre- new-age sounding (only a touch). Though this album isn't actually bad, it's definitely not like the amazing Aqua or Epsilon in Malaysian Pale. Stuntman seems to be geared towards accessibility rather than the usual experimental journeys that Froese is known for in his solo work and within Tangerine Dream. This is an album that foreshadows the effects of the '80s on great progressive electronic artists.

I have to agree with another reviewer, philippe, that the best track on this album and the closest to Froese's famous sound is "Drunken Mozart in the Desert", but I still don't particularly care for it too much anyway. To me, this whole album sounds like elaborate variations on Camel's "Aristillus" from Moonmadness, which was even the most pointless track on that album (great album, though). These tracks do still progress though, in an '80s Tangerine Dream-meets- Kraftwerk kind of cold, dead, dreamy style.

Stuntman isn't great, and I'm honestly taken aback by the favorable rating on this album. This album isn't really comparable to Froese's best work done earlier in the '70s, but all in all, it's definitely better than most of Tangerine Dream's '80s-'90s albums.

Edgar Froese's solo albums are usually a step down from his concurrent work in Tangerine Dream, since they are mostly produced in order to earn some quick money to fund more Tangerine Dream projects. In some respects Stuntman is a welcome exception, standing head and shoulders above Cyclone and Force Majeure, the preceding Tangerine Dream releases, though at the same time this is mostly because it's more consistent rather than because it's actually more interesting. It's the standard late 1970s early 1980s Tangerine Dream stuff spiced up with Froese's guitar work and better compositional taste than he's shown since Stratosfear - proving once again that, like Klaus Schulze, Froese is a master of evoking atmosphere in electronic music. Worth a listen for any fan of electronic music in the Tangerine Dream mode, but Froese has done better both in Tangerine Dream and in his solo career.

This was Edgar's last album of the seventies released in 1979. He's gone completely digital for the first time although he does add analogue synths and piano to this record. The mellotron is gone (gasp).

"Stuntman" has this electronic beat as almost horn-like synths join in. "It Would Be Like Samoa" has these outbursts of sound along with birds chirping then flute-like sounds. An electronic beat joins in before 1 1/2 minutes. The flute-like sounds stop after 4 minutes as other sounds cascade in and out. Then it becomes more spacey. "Detroit Snackbar Dreamer" has these strange and fairly high pitched sounding synths and a beat.

"Drunken Mozart In The Desert" is spacey as a beat comes in just before 2 minutes. It stops after 5 minutes as sounds pulse. Horn-like synths with spacey background sounds take over 6 1/2 minutes in. "A Dali-Esque Sleep Fuse" is really the one song that stands out for me in a positive way. Faint sounds to start then it picks up with a beat. Guitar-like synths come in then they stop before 6 minutes as a fast paced sound takes over. It's spacey late. "Scarlet Score For Mescalero" has these slowly pulsating sounds as other high pitched ones play over top.

A good album and one many Froese fans rate highly. For me 3 stars is the right rating.

As good as any Tangerine Dream album, 1979's 'Stuntman' was proof that it really was all about the group's founding member. The one constant in the group's four-decade existence, Edgar Froese - Dali companion, psychedelic guitarist, Berlin School-founder, electronic innovator - has enjoyed a remarkable career. Under his leadership Tangerine Dream issued a plethora of classic albums, enjoying a glorious first fifteen-years that began with the experimental acid-rock of 'Electronic Meditation'(1970) and included such groundbreaking albums as 'Phaedra'(1974), 'Rubycon'(1975) and 'Force Majeure'(1979). Tangerine Dream were a big deal during the 1970's, and the group enjoyed strong album sales and regular sold-out tours. This allowed Froese to commence a concurrent solo career and for some - though whisper it quietyly - Froese's own albums proved just as remarkable, if not better, than his work with Tangerine Dream. For this writer, both 1975's lushly-mysterious 'Epsilon In Malaysian Pale' and 'Stuntman' represent the very best of Froese's solo material, albums that rank alongside the very best of Tangerine Dream. Issued during 1979, the same year as Pink Floyd's 'The Wall' and 'Apocalypse Now'(a great year...) 'Stuntman' finds Froese matching the meditative ambience of his earlier records with a slightly more melodic hue. Its a beautiful album, and because this writer loves it so much he finds it very difficult to write about. That's how good it is. If you're looking for more beyond your-now complete Tangerine Dream collection, the solo career of Froese is the place the to visit. Enjoy. STEFAN TURNER, BRISTOL, 2013

Edgar Froese's best melodic album

After the uneven double release "Ages", Edgar Froese confirms his melodic orientation with this 1979 opus. More accessible than its predecessors and featuring shorter tracks, "Stuntman" can be described as Daliesque or surrealistic electronic music, as it combines cold synthetic sequences with strange unreal melodies. For the first time, the musician uses the then nascent digital sounds. The compositions are therefore on the bridge joining the analogue and digital eras, which is a bit particular. The final result is very nice and avoids the lassitude and redundancy that can be felt on the previous album.

Again, the disc features Klaus Krieger at drums and is quite different from the progressive rock turn taken by TANGERINE DREAM at the same period.

The title track is quite dreamy and spacey. A soothing trip to the stars. "It Would Be Like Samoa" pre-dates the sonorities of TD's "Convention of the 24" in the 1982 album "White Eagle". A trippy cool soundscape evoking futuristic Incas architectures. Then comes the mysterious "Detroit Snackbar Dreamer", slower and more intriguing but as good as than the former tracks.

The second half is slightly more ambient and less melodic. The soft "Drunken Mozart In The Desert" shows Edgar's classical influences while featuring an unusual mystical electronic loop. The final part sounds a little dated, but remains however pleasant and dreamy. For the first time, "A Daliesque Sleep Fuse" is a reference to his mentor Salvador Dali, to whom the German pioneer will dedicate an entire record 26 years later. A fast pulsating tune with a typical distorted guitar solo from Froese and KRAFTWERK-ian sound effects. The superfluous ender "Scarlet Score For Mescalero" is the only weak track of the disc.

"Stuntman" is an essential listen for TANGERINE DREAM fans, especially for the Schmoelling-era lovers. Quite unique in Edgar and even TD's discographies, it somehow pre-dates the style adopted by the band during the beginning of the eighties, while remaining not commercial. A bridge between two decades. Although the electronic sonorities did not aged very well, the mixture of surrealistic melodies and synthetic sequences is efficient and should please every old school electronic music aficionado.

With "Epsilon In Malaysian Pale", Edgar Froese's best album, and his most accessible.

I was a little kid remembering how the 1970s became the 1980s, and it seems like a rather fast transition giving you little time to adjust. I think it had something to do with 1979 was the beginning of the 1980s, you can notice that in a lot of the music of the time, for example Gary Numan ("Cars" sounded like it could have easily fit well in 1981-82, when in fact the song, and the album it came from, The Pleasure Principle, dates from '79). Disco was the big reminder it was still the '70s. Tangerine Dream's Force Majeure certainly hinted at a more '80s sound, but the old sound was still there, especially many of those nice sequencer passages found on the title track, but for Froese's solo album from later that year, he let everyone know this was the '80s, even if it was still 1979. For one thing, the Mellotron was ditched, prototype digital synths from PPG were in, but still some of the old gear was still used (he couldn't possibly ditch all the old gear that fast). Due to this more '80s synthetic sound, it's little wonder many tend to look down on this album. Is it really that bad? Not really, and I'm sure fans of early '80s electronic music should have no trouble with this. The title track is a bit pop-oriented. He must have thought he needed a hit on the lines of Jean Michel Jarre's "Oxygene IV". You can imagine hearing this as a theme song for a sci-fi TV series circa 1982. But then he moves on to less commercial territory with "It Would Be Like Samoa", a lot of it (unsurprisingly) has that Tangerine Dream-like feel to it, complete with sequencer (Edgar Froese style), with lots of polyphonic synths. "Detroit Snackbar Dreaming" is a great piece, I really dig those Moog synth leads. "A Dali-Esque Sleep Fuse" really surprised me, I hear this glassy synth tone that sounds exactly like a Yamaha DX7. Wow! I can't believe I'm hearing a DX-7 sound from a 1979 recording (no, I don't own the Eastside version, I avoid those like poison, I own the original UK Virgin LP pressing, complete with cool inner sleeve depicting all his gear of the time), of course coming from a PPG synth, since the DX7 obviously didn't hit the market until some four years later (1983). The last cut I honestly don't care for, it seems a bit on the fluffy New Age side of things, and I can see why, compared to earlier albums, this isn't as highly regarded, but I enjoy most of it still.