Tangerine Dream: Untangling the Tangram

PoPT is a great box for me (the line-up with Schmoelling is my favorite), but apart from The Soldier it's not exactly a lot of new music. It's nice to have The Keep but the music had already been released in a limited edition (W.B. said it was new and newly remastered from the original source, which is nonsense). What they should have done is presented the complete Risky Business score. That'd be something! Of course, the remastering and the book are worth the price of admission, regardless.

The future is bright - the future is Tangerine! Jeanne D'Arc is Tangerine Dream's 29th studio album and their 89th album overall. As you may have guessed from the album title, this is a tribute to Joan of Arc - the French 15th century heroine of The Hundred Years War and the original feminist of the women's liberation movement,  long before Germaine Greer came along and told women to burn their bras five centuries later.  

This album is where the stars come into perfect alignment for Tangerine Dream, as not only does it feature the welcome return of Linda Spa on saxophone (her first appearance on a Tangerine Dream studio album since the Goblins' Club album in 1996), but it's also the first album to include keyboard player Thorsten Quaeschning as a full-time member of the band. Sadly though, this would be the last appearance of Jerome Froese in the TD line-up, having been with the band since the Melrose album in 1990.

Dawn comes around every 24 hours, but in the case of Blue Dawn, it's taken 18 long years for it to finally appear on the horizon. This is Tangerine Dream's 31st studio album and their 92nd album overall. Blue Dawn was composed and recorded back in 1988 during Tangerine Dream's North American tour, but for various unknown reasons, the album was never released at the time. The album features the short-lived duo of Edgar Froese and (blink and you'll miss him) Ralf Wadephul, whose membership of Tangerine Dream was as ephemeral as a proverbial blue dawn.  

Are you ready to experience a spiritual awakening with the ultimate Tangerine Dream experience!? This is Dante's La Divina Commedia  brought to life in a stunning live performance in the magnificent setting of an old castle near Cologne in Germany. 

40 Years Roadmap to Music is a mini-album, released as an adjunct to the marvellous Temprodrome concert with the three pieces of additional music composed individually by Edgar Froese, Jerome Froese & Thorsten Quaeschning. What with mini-albums, video albums and bootleg recordings added to an already long and complicated discography, arranging Tangerine Dream's numerous albums into some semblance of order is fast-becoming a Quartermaster's Nightmare. 

"Preston 1980" is the eighth double album in The Bootmoon Series, the 24th Live album and Tangerine Dream's 94th album overall (not including mini-albums, DVD/Video albums and compilations).

"TD Plays TD" is Tangerine Dream's 96th album. The album is a compilation of re-recordings and re-mixes of 13 classic TD tracks from years gone by, so step into the TARDIS and get ready to travel backwards and forwards through time in Tangerine Dream's universe of sound. 

Springtime in Nagasaki is Tangerine Dream's 33rd full-length studio album and their 98th album overall. This is the first album in the Five Atomic Seasons series, featuring Edgar Froese & Thorsten Quaeschning in a far more reflective mood as this series of albums commemorates the horrific and devastating atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6th & the 9th in 1945. 

The album serves as a  timely reminder that the ever-present threat of nuclear war still remains with us to this day.