ENCORE (LIVE 1977)

Tangerine Dream's Encore is a tour document showing the long, involved, ambitious compositional structures featured on the band's 1977 USA tour. It took me a long time to fully appreciate this album - not least because previous CD versions hacked it about here and there - but with the new remaster coming out on the In Search of Hades boxed set I find I have a new appreciation for this material.

Encore is best approached if you think of it less as a product of Tangerine Dream, the enigmatic Krautrock nightmare band of old, but Tangerine Dream, the artful soundtrack merchants whose sound would add such a distinctive touch to so many movies. Don't expect another rendition of Zeit - their previous double album following a one-song-per-side structure - but do expect more twists and turns than some of their soundtrack work, including some really nice guitar work from Froese on Coldwater Canyon.