ROCKOON

Longtime fans of Tangerine Dream know exactly where to look for Jerome Froese (the infant son of band leader Edgar Froese) on just about all of their classic early album covers. And here he was again in 1992, suddenly grown to young adulthood, and this time joining his dad as a full-fledged member of the (yet again) re-constituted group.

The question was whether this surprise injection of young blood would help invigorate a once vital but by then all but exhausted creative spirit. Not immediately, it seemed. I belatedly found this album soon after hearing the band's pedestrian 1988 effort "Optical Race", and was surprised (and more than a little discouraged) to note how little had changed in the intervening four years. The equipment was no doubt more sophisticated, but the music was (once again) stuck in the same shallow rut, proof that all the state-of- the-art electronics on Earth can't buy a decent melody.

At this low point in their long (and even now still very much active) lifespan the group had devolved from electronic artists to wannabe rock stars making electronic music: a subtle distinction perhaps, but a necessary one. Half the album is credited to Edgar and Jerome; the rest to Jerome and Edgar, but for all the difference between them the whole thing might just as well have been composed and performed by a machine.

The best tracks (a relative measure, to be sure) are at least blessed with enough energy to offset the lack of any genuine invention: "Graffiti Street", "City Dwarves", and the even more oddly titled album closer "Girls On Broadway". The rest of it is featureless, homogeneous filler, pleasant enough as a way to pass the time but hardly making any demands on your attention and/or imagination.

Tangerine Dream certainly wasn't going to win any new disciples with this set. And the band's older, more discriminating fans could only defend it out of stubborn loyalty, still waiting (as they were by then all-too accustomed) for something better next time.