Tangerine Dream, ACMI Theatre Melbourne 20-11-2014

TANGERINE DREAM - `SORCERER' LIVE at the ACMI THEATRE, MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA, 20TH NOVEMBER 2014:



Line-Up:
Edgar Froese
Thorsten Quaeschning
Ulrich Schnauss
Hoshiko Yamane

Tangerine Dream performed a continuous two hour set tonight again in Melbourne, Australia, playing directly under a large cinema screen showing the `Sorcerer' film above them. With the dialogue in the movie completely muted, this new Tangerine Dream line-up that debuted a few days ago presented all of the themes from the original 1977 soundtrack, some reworked completely by way of band member Hoshiko Yamane's violin and cello replacing electric guitar. In addition, there was essentially an extra 75 minutes of music added for the occasion, and the band performed uninterrupted for two straight hours.

The band presented the most hypnotic, brooding and dramatic soundtrack possible, with plenty of thick and loud (perfectly emulated!) Mellotron and a variety of beats that gave the music more of a futuristic quality than ever before. A real highlight was watching both Thorsten Quaeschning and Ulrich Schnauss' mastery of improvised keyboard build in several slowly unfolding soundscapes that reached an unbearable level of tension! Founder Edgar Froese offered delicate and perfectly restrained contributions throughout, and all four musicians complimented each-other beautifully.

As good as the Melbourne Town Hall performance was from a few days before, this was far superior and even more immersive. More along the lines of the much-loved Tangerine Dream music of old, it actually succeeded in making the band sound more thrilling, vital and relevant than ever.

If you have the opportunity to see the band perform this soundtrack in your own country, make sure you see it!!

******

My partners in crime for this event were my best buddy Harry (Prog Archives member Stratcat), music blogger Bruce J and his lovely wife, and I also got to meet two passionate fans Geoff K and Colin A from a T'Dream fangroup, and they couldn't have been more genuine.

Thanks to all of the above for a wonderful evening, and for Tangerine Dream delivering the PERFECT night of progressive-electronic music!

Some of my own personal photos from the night follow:























Edited by Aussie-Byrd-Brother - November 20 2014 at 08:48

Yes, Sam, and I TOTALLY forgot to mention that it was more intimate, thanks!

It was difficult to pay attention to the movie because:

a) It was totally muted, so no film-based audio was present.
b) The music the band was playing was two straight hours of music, and although it had all the material from the original soundtrack worked in, the music never tried to actually match up specifically with the visuals.

There was a guy sitting directly in front of me that was reading the film subtitles on his phone the entire time though!

Just come across this clip, a short one posted by Geoff, one of the T'Dream fans I mentioned above, give you a bit of an idea what the show looked like:

Great review, A-B-B! Sorcerer is one of TD's darkest works. Looks like it was a good show.

Meltdowner wrote: ^ Althought I would like to listen to a TD cover of Free Bird

Did they have any opening acts with them? When I saw them live in Copenhagen back in April this year, they had two of the Cluster guys with them and also Neu!.

Thanks for the review and pics.  I'd really like to see them in concert some day.  I'm mostly familiar only with their 70s and 80s material, so I'd like to experience their current material in the flesh, it would be a great introduction for me.

Verslibre, thanks for those tid-bits of information, very interesting!

Urgh, `Rockoon'....isn't that one a shocker! So faceless and charmless!

I don't think this new disc `Mula Kunia' is a radical reworking of their sound, but it's a little more subtle and ambient, so hopefully even better results will emerge from this line-up soon.

Over the course of the two concerts I attended, I picked up several discs - the three CD `Phaedra Farwell Concerts 2014', `One Night in Africa', `Sorcerer 2014', `Franz Kafka: The Castle', `Chandra: The Phantom Ferryman part 2', and a double compilation `Booster VI'. Listening over them all over the last few days, they're all perfectly nice, each with standout tracks, plenty of nice ones, and some throwaways too - so pretty much par of the course with their track record for some time now!

Thanks, Sam, I haven't listened to that `Booster VI' yet, but I'm back at work starting tomorrow, so that's when I'll be spinning much more music again.

Both the 1977 and the recent 2014 versions of `Sorcerer' are superb, but it's best to treat them as two different things as opposed to comparing them! Both stand up well on their own merits

I just found out that all of these Australian shows were professionally recorded, so there's a good chance they'll receive some sort of official release in the near future. That would be a nice way to remember the shows. Take that, my dodgy Goblin live in Melbourne bootlegs!

Aussie-Byrd-Brother wrote: Verslibre, thanks for those tid-bits of information, very interesting! Urgh, `Rockoon'....isn't that one a shocker! So faceless and charmless! I don't think this new disc `Mula Kunia' is a radical reworking of their sound, but it's a little more subtle and ambient, so hopefully even better results will emerge from this line-up soon. Over the course of the two concerts I attended, I picked up several discs - the three CD `Phaedra Farwell Concerts 2014', `One Night in Africa', `Sorcerer 2014', `Franz Kafka: The Castle', `Chandra: The Phantom Ferryman part 2', and a double compilation `Booster VI'. Listening over them all over the last few days, they're all perfectly nice, each with standout tracks, plenty of nice ones, and some throwaways too - so pretty much par of the course with their track record for some time now!

So this was the show I missed in Copenhagen