TANGRAM

Tangerine Dream's sound underwent a long transition in the second half of the 1970s, with various changes to the sound and different avenues explored, but in retrospect (once you set aside dead-ends like the interesting but flawed experiment Cyclone) the general direction seems to have been an evolution from their classic mid-1970s progressive electronic style as captured on Phaedra and Rubycon to a more accessible approach that would become the foundation of much of their 1980s soundtrack work.

Though this approach would gain wide exposure when applied to the soundtrack of Thief, it is on Tangram that its first pure expression is found, the new lineup of Franke, Froese, and Schmoelling gelling almost immediately to present a peaceful, meditative long-form piece with melodic almost-cyberpunk elements, offering a purist electronic sound which casts away some of the more rock-oriented accretions that Tangerine Dream had added and finds them adapting to new technologies as perfectly as they had the synthesisers of the 1970s.