Tangerine Dream S/D

http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2006/02/tangerine_dream.html

i think "rubycon" / "stratosfear" are the best, though i'm still trying to really absorb "atem" and "force majeure"

Stratosfear is brilliant. as is Atem. And I like Electronic Meditation.

And Ash Ra Temple are great. Not overrated.

"electronic meditation" sounds to me more like those early road cone kraftwerk albums ("vol 1 + vol 2")

Hmmmmmmmmm, I thought I knew "Statosfear" but I'd never heard it before. I don't like it, it sounds like soundtrack music - but not in a good way. They just can't write decent melodies, the melodies they do write are so banal, and the synths are edging towards cheesiness. They still did some good music after this tho.

I prefer mid period Tangerine Dream. Those late 70s/early 80s albums. Lost of great arpeggio synths.

Stratosfear is great!

Wallpaper prog.

S: Edgar Froese's first few solo records. More mellotron, less rock. More pleasure.

I feel like an idiot for not having gotten around to this music. Which albums sound the most like TD trying to be Steve Reich as in the Risky Business soundtrack?

their soundtrack to thief makes every scene feel like it's the big final end scene

Which albums sound the most like TD trying to be Steve Reich as in the Risky Business soundtrack?

I don't know Hyperborea, but I haven't heard anything else from them that sounds like the Risky Business stuff.

"Sequent C'" is one of the most beautiful pieces of music I've ever heard.

I love everything they did in the 70s, including the one with vocals.

Just picked up Zeit, Phaedra, Rubycon and Stratosfear for $5 each at a used shop, finally. I've been waiting for a good point to jump into the TD discography, and this seemed as good a chance as any, so here I go...

cant argue with those albums. You need Force Majeure though.

I'll keep my eye out!

Pity spotify doesnt work in america, theres loads of TD on it. Sadly the 1st 5 arent but the ones you mentioned are on it, most of the other 70s stuff is on it as well as the dodgy 80s stuff.

I've become a big fan of Green Desert over the last few years. It's prime era 70s TD that wasn't released until the mid 80s. And it has DRUMS.

"Dolphin Dance" from the Underwater Sunlight LP is a banger.

man "Lana" is so great

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJVouCbneGM

Not much love for my favorite, Hyperborea.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxPTjPzTVdM&feature=related

Caveat: the visuals are, predictably, total cheese.

Poland is pretty fucking massive I must say.

i don't suppose anyone's listened to the new one, the gate of saturn?

it finally occurs to me today after many years that "Ricochet, Part Two" is fucking sick

I have been playing the two Virgin box sets a lot recently. I had some of the lps originally but not all of them. You can hear the synth technology getting better as time goes on, but "Hyperborea" is still a classic way to end their Virgin contract. And the Edgar Froese set which came out a few months ago is very very good, his first two solo albums are nearly the equal of "Rubycon" and "Ricochet".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4w8pbGz7E8c
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4uPfuh6rkAw

I saw the sdtk for Three O'Clock High at the store today and did not buy it. Did I make a mistake?
Something tells me it's gotta be terrible, but I see Tangerine Dream and my brain can't make rational decisions.

i've decided to buy up any TD soundtracks i see. i passed on 'shy people' once and then listened online and realized i had erred. 'three o'clock high' sounds pretty decent from the allmusic samples.

if you haven't heard it yet, get 'firestarter'. pretty splendid.

after 1986, ignore
before 1986, mostly good
before 1983, even better

I normally go by these ^^^ rules but I just didn't feel like this soundtrack was going to be good -- now i am having second thoughts about my second thoughts. i should have just bought it!
i'll see if it's there next time. if so, it was meant to be. if not, so be it.

the post-'86 rule is ok but still, '87:

http://d2oz5j6ef5tbf6.cloudfront.net/cd/large/Near_dark_Varese_VSD_47309.jpg

well i'd buy that on the cover alone without any idea what it sounds like but

this doesn't inspire a similar confidence

http://991.com/newGallery/Tangerine-Dream-Three-OClock-High-537421.jpg

yeah that's an unfortunate cover.

I just realized my itunes library contains 7 different versions of the Keep soundtrack...still shooting for perfection.

Three O'Clock High is a great movie.
I have zero recollection of its Tangerine Dream soundtrack, though.

I went back and it was there! Someone had moved it from the new arrivals but it was still there.
The songs are all really short. Will report back once I've heard the whole thing (am between classes, so this is basically my evening before I go back to work in a few hours).
So far the slower themes are pretty good and have a very pleasantly familiar late 80s incidental music vibe.

It's like the sonic equivalent of Anne Ryan's lite gothy smart/stylish girl look in the movie
http://cineplex.media.baselineresearch.com/images/262122/262122_large.jpg

I had a pretty big crush on that character when I was twelve.

Or however old I was when I first saw Three O'clock High. I feel like it was on HBO one day when I stayed home sick from school.

She and Michelle Meyrink were like supplemental Andies or Winona's cool older sister. Style icons for the unconventionally attractive.

The soundtrack is...not that good, unfortunately. It's not awful or shameful or anything, but the songs are all really short and don't go anywhere. I guess they (TD) did the best they had with what they had. I don't imagine there was a lot of need for expansive 20 minute journeys into outer space in this movie.

The Thief soundtrack is much better.

http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2771/4269692309_43b6c89b01.jpg

<swoon>

Score at the store today! Got Stratosfear and Cyclone. Can honestly say I have never heard anyone sing the words "bent cold sidewalk" with such zeal.

Bought Tangram on vinyl today for a few quid...what's the general consensus on it? Wasn't sure what to make on first listen.

When I told my wife I was going to see a band with no original members she said "what? who are you going to see then?". I enjoyed it though (except for a couple of new pieces which had very lumbering "bum tish" drum parts). Maybe it's not that different from seeing a tribute band but yeah it's also some random people on stage twiddling knobs (occasional flute solos notwithstanding).

I think the electric violin is a good addition to the current lineup. And the 50 Years Of Phaedra album is good; I submitted a review to The Wire but it hasn't run yet.

I don't really know anything from like....1981 to 2016, anyone rep for any of those albums?

Yeah Optical Race is great, I've raved about it a few times on TD threads, but it's where I got off the bus. Exit (1981) is probably my favourite of the 80s albums. White Eagle and Hyperborea are both good too.

Can't get my head round a Froese-less TD though so I have no intention of listening to any of the post-Edgar stuff.

The three post-Froese albums I've heard - Raum, Recurring Dreams (a collection of reworked old pieces) and Quantum Gate/Quantum Key (which used elements he left behind) have been OK. Not embarrassing.

Raum is a good time!

Logos from 1982

That is an abridged version of the 1982 Dominion Theatre concert. You're better off listening to the whole concert which was released on the Pilots of Purple Twilight box set.

"bailed after around 1981"

The frustrating thing is that they spread themselves really thin in the 1980s. I remember reading that their equipment cost a fortune so they basically had to keep working non-stop, hence all the soundtracks. The practice of releasing a studio album, plus a soundtrack, plus a largely original live album basically used up their remaining pool of ideas. And doubly frustratingly some of their best work in that decade is only available on soundtrack albums that otherwise have regular songs from the film.

e.g. the music they did for Risky Business, particularly "Love on a Real Train", is surprisingly subtle and has aged incredibly well, but the soundtrack only has two tracks by the band. Thief is really good as well but has a mixture of previously-released material. And the score for The Keep is great but was never properly released. The title track is very similar to one of the tracks from My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, and some of the rest of it comes from Logos. I have a soft spot for Legend because that's the version that was played on British television.

Post-1988 it's basically just noodling.

I think the other aspect is how the evolving technology made things much easier to crank things out. Most of the big hitters of 70s electronica got into an arms race of continual upgrades throughout the 80s, and you can see the appeal of MIDI, patch recall, digital sequencing (that you can save!) etc if your early experiences were wrestling with janky equipment that constantly drifted out of tune, may or may not hold a sync sequence depending on the weather, constantly broke down on tour etc. But there's some magic in the struggle, which is lost when things become more convenient.

(Side bar, but I think rave was a creative schism for the 70s/80s guys, most of whom got off the upgrade train at that point [e.g. TD's 90s work sounds v similar to their 80s work]. Some stuck with it; it's quite fun to hear Jean Michel Jarre in the 90s - with an expensive studio of boutique vintage gear - try and largely fail to capture the energy of a track made by two teenagers for 50p in a bedsit).

But there's some magic in the struggle, which is lost when things become more convenient.

yeah I agree, that's what I find so fascinating about those early Cluster records, they're full of little glitches and mini power outages, you can practically hear them fighting with the equipment in some points. 70s TD had that quality too but obviously it went away once they got "better" equipment. I think they work best when there's some entropy in their work. when some elements are slightly out of tune or at least sound a little gnarly. the new band does seem to understand this somewhat but I still think they're a tad too 'smooth' most of the time

I like the modern TD too but yes, their gear is too good - most modern analogue gear (esp modular stuff) has resolved many of the issues TD faced back in the day.

The most interesting take on this problem I've seen was Jean Michel Jarre's "Oxygene on original instruments" tour c 2007 - a real high-wire act where the machines had to be tuned at the start of the process (and things glitched out considerably during the shows). Plus he needed to buy/hire four of every instrument to get round all the overdubbing on the record. A magnificent folly!

I've seen this theory before about it getting too easy for them but I'm not quite buying it yet. They start losing steam around the time a lot of great rock bands do.

Did some of their equipment really just die at live shows? It's kind of mortifying when that happens, I seen it with HTRK.

I think it's well established that most of what was heard at TD's live shows in the '70s was coming from a tape machine. There was no practicable way to recreate their studio techniques on stage.

decent haul at the record fair yesterday :)

https://i.imgur.com/E5JGFWZ.jpeg

And the score for The Keep is great but was never properly released

FYI, The Keep got reissued in 2021 for Record Store Day. I remember it being pretty good:

https://www.discogs.com/release/19519408-Tangerine-Dream-The-Keep

2018 performance of Stratosfear...this totally rules

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUl47O4MNzE

also now that I've properly absorbed it, that 50 Years of Phaedra release is incredible. as you may know there was a hilariously terrible 'update' of Phaedra in 2005, which featured a stupid looking grey space alien on the cover...this one kinda takes those ideas and does 'em right, like you're getting to hear what was actually in Edgar's head when he made it. but the Phaedra stuff is barely even a quarter of the album, it's 2 1/2 hours long with a great mix of new and old stuff, including a long improv part....feel like this release ought to be a bigger deal but I'm guessing the title "50 Years of Phaedra" is putting people off

they play like 15 minutes of GTA V music on it too. it rules

ooh that sounds v appealing
i haven't listened to TD in a long while and maybe it is time

I think I have a review of it in the issue of The Wire that comes out tomorrow. If it does get published, I'll post it here.

As promised:

Tangerine Dream
50 Years Of Phaedra: At The Barbican
Kscope 2xCD/DL/3xLP

It's usually a given that Legacy Act Performs Old Album In Full concerts are lame. But Tangerine Dream have carried on in a surprisingly non-embarrassing manner since founder Edgar Froese's death in 2015 - the current incarnation, featuring Thorsten Quaeschning, Hoshiko Yamane and Paul Frick, have been putting out strong new material (though it should be noted that both 2017's Quantum Gate and 2022's Raum featured archival performances by Froese). They've also toured extensively, playing new material and reworking old TD classics and improvising.

Quaeschning refers to the improvised portions of their concerts as sessions, and they've released eight volumes of those live recordings. Another such session, running to nearly 40 minutes, takes up the middle portion of this two and a half hour concert, and it's captivating, like wandering through someone else's dream.

The main focus of the concert heard here is a performance of Phaedra, their 50 year old fifth album and first for Virgin Records, and their commercial breakthrough. They don't simply play the album's four tracks in order and exactly as they appear on the original LP, though. Quaeschning and company update the music and make it their own. The title piece, for example, originally a nearly 18 minute slow drift through the universe, is only about six minutes long here, and tucked into the middle of the aforementioned improv session.

Meanwhile, "Sequent 'C'", originally a two minute flute coda, is more than twice that length this time round, and opens the show, while "Movements Of A Visionary" and "Mysterious Semblance At The Strand Of Nightmares" are close to their studio running time but still updated with modern synths and more precise timing. After an hour of greatest hits, "Phaedra" is played again, as a seven minute encore with surprisingly aggressive programmed rhythms.

Tangerine Dream are unwilling to surrender to nostalgia; they're still looking forward and journeying outward.

There is what I suppose is a Tangerine Dream side project called Bioscope which is Thorsten Quaesching and Steve Rothery, from Marillion. It's really good, no surprise but it kinda sounds like Ricochet. I had my doubts about Rothery but it sounds like this is an album he's wanted to make his whole life. Adds a real Pink Floyd dimension to it. But it's got a lot of Krautrocky stuff too. Plus its just a real great sounding album, its got that expansive spacey sound to it that Steven Wilson goes for a lot. This track isn't really representative of the album, but man its like psychedelic Neu!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9HMLKJ4OVM

sounds great
so rothery could also be a description then?