FORCE MAJEURE

I'm one of those who like the spacey "Pink period" of Tangerine Dream and even if I liked the temporary introduction of vocals in their music and consider Cyclone a very good album, Force Majeure left me a bit concerned.

The title track has a promising spacey intro, but when it turns into rock it's quite trivial. The two-three minutes of guitar-bass-drums are not bad but when they turn back into electronic, even with the rock contamination, is better.

This is the problem with bands with a distinctive sound. We fans in general can't accept changes that make them sound like "everybody else". They are back to a noisy psychedelic part at minute 10, and this is a thing that I don't understand. They risk to loose fans by going into the rock realm, but at the same time they can't give up to spacey and psychedelic sounds that can't be appealing for the mainstream public. It's like Roger Waters' Ca Ira: it's too operistic for Floyd fans and too Floydian for opera fans. Nobody likes it, I think.

This in general. In particular Force Majeure contains many good parts so that the TD excursion into unfamiliar realms can be forgiven.

"Cloudburst Flight", opened by acoustic guitar and keyboard has a Krautrock flavour but is unusually melodic for TD. A good track not too different from the things of the previous albums since Phaedra.

With "Thru Metamorphic Rock" we enter a totally different realm. To be honest this track makes me think to Eloy, and even if well played and absolutely not bad, it's difficult thinking that this is a TD track.

This album may be a good starting point for one who wants to explore this band and is not familiar with the space rock of the beginnings and with instrumental and repetitive tracks which last about 20 minutes each. The music in this album is really easier, even the noisy interlude of the third track is everything but challenging. A good album but not representative of the band, so 3 stars.