RICOCHET

Being my first Tangerine Dream album, I was expecting from it what Ashra(not Ash Ra Tempel) offered on their first two albums: stellar spacey electronic music which leaves your mind blank for a couple of hours. Well, Ricochet, or simply Tangerine Dream, offer a not quite different style of electronic music, but sufficiently different so as to not produce the same effect that Ashra produces.

Already opening with a dark enwrapping synth you'll know that this album will not give you good dreams. While it later evolves to the typical electronic pattern, unlike Ashra's electronic patterns which are only made by a sequencer, Tangerine Dream adds the mellotron for a deeper and more atmpospheric soundscape which as a result makes the music a whole lot darker and less pleasing, that is if you're looking for chilling spacey moods. Also the addition of a gentle, early Nick Mason-esque, persistent percussion plus an odd melody played by the guitar which reminds me of ancient Egypt, just makes you think of the music even more which is not what you want for a chilling spacey experience. However that's just the first half of the first part of Ricochet, after that it abruptly changes to the more straight-forward electronic you expect with pretty frenetic keyboards. Even if it still presents a pretty creepy soundscape overall, it pretty much takes your mind elsewhere.

The second part of Ricochet fortunately continues in the vein of the second half from the first part. While it introduces itself with some simple piano, which is pretty awkward, it then develops into a fantastic dreamy ambience which is full of intricating synth cascades and echoey guitars, and as a result creating an incredible electronic masterpiece. As for the creepy feature from the first part, this part also presents it but it acts in a superficial way fortunately, meaning that while you can still listen to pretty creepy resoundings it just works for the flow of the music itself unlike in the first part which was the main feature.

My conclusion is that Tangerine Dream while probably the epitome of Prog Electronic at it's finest, it's also at its most adventurous way, which as a whole it's not the easiest way to get into the genre. I, for one, prefer a rather more simplistic kind of electronic which doesn't make you think, that is based solely in spacey atmospheres which barely features dark moods or odd melodies, clear examples of this is either New Age of Earth by Ashra or Oxygene by Jean-Michel Jarre.

4 stars: excellent adventurous prog electronic, but probably will be my last of that style for now.

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