RICOCHET

Guitar and percussion make a return to this Tangerine Dream album, which shows the influence of some of Klaus Schulze's work from Cyborg onwards. Moving away from the ethereal, Mellotron-dominated sound of Phaedra and Rubycon, the group explore electronic realms which point the way towards their bland, soulless soundtrack work of the 1980s. Though doubtless innovative at the time, Ricochet has been rehashed so often by other artists (and by Tangerine Dream themselves) that it's begun to sound cliche, despite the creative breakthrough that it is between the ethereal realms of Phaedra and Rubycon and the cyberpunk future. Still, it's hard to deny the technical capabilities of the band, and it's a cut above a lot of its imitators, so four stars seems fair.