Tangerine Dream - My Appraisal.

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Originally Posted by DSJR

You want BIG em music, try Redshift LOUD!!!!!

Vangelis could be good, but liked too much far eastern sounds and "tinkly bits" IMO. Apparently, he almost deafened himself and lost most of his high frequency sensitivity apparently.


I tried to listen to "Phaedra 2005" this last week. I dislike it, but so many of you guys may prefer it for the reasons I don't. "Movements of a Visionary" is superb in both old and new versions.

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Hi Dave,
I'm embarrassed to say I've never heard (or heard of, maybe) Redshift so maybe I'll try and Spotify them. It always surprises me that more modern musicians don't deafen themselves given their regular close proximity to mega decibels - same goes for those (usually backwards facing base ball cap wearing) young pillocks who have more power coming out of their over-amped bass that takes up the entire boot than they have on their drive shaft.
I wasn't overkeen on Phaedra the last time I listened to it - maybe it's time to give it another spin - but believe me it's loads better than Rubicon. 'Movements of a Visionary' is again one I don't think I've heard or heard of. Dohhhhh! :doh: I've just Googled it and found that it is said to be part of Phaedra so I'm now confused - I guess 'Phaedra' and 'Phaedra 2005' are not exactly identical?
Cheers,

Phaedra consists of four tracks, the title track taking up one LP side. Movements' is the penultimate track.

I'm stunned you don't like Rubycon - it's AWESOME, especially if you listen late at night with lights low or even out. Imagine underwater oceanic scenes and you'll maybe get something from it - there again, maybe not ;)

back in 1988, TD did a "version" of Phaedra with more modern synths and percussion added and this sort of became the 2005 release, as well as a subtle remix on, I think, TD Plays TD. I believe Virgin won't return the copyrights to Edgar F so he "tangentises" old tracks, adding often broad washes of sound over old recordings to varying effect. Oldies like me hate this, but newbies to the band don't always feel the same.

Try Spotifying TD's "Underwater Sunlight." It's lovely and the ONLY album of theirs that my better half will listen to.

Regarding Redshift. Their Mark Shreeve has done various bits here and there over the years, but in the mid nineties he bought a Moog Modular IIIC synth and set about restoring it. The power and "organic analogue" quality it has is just incredible and CD or not, much of this power comes across in the recordings he's done. These are mainly available via FLAC downloads, although some CD's are available

Try-

http://www.redshreeve.org/

I can't get the official site (www.redshift .biz) at the moment..

The first few discs (studio and live) were influenced by the mid-seventies TD and Klaus Schulze I love so much, but became darker and less derivative as time went on - far more abstract with a more aggressive synth sound IMO..

Try the site Groove.nl (I think it is). there's hundreds of "EM" albums with many sound samples to try - Ron Boots is a good artist to start on as well as Gert Emmens. I have none of their albums, but some of the mp3 samples sound interesting.

There's a great free "EM" based internet radio show and this can be downloaded. I've forgotten my facebook password tonight (bloody computer cleaners that "automatically" clean your hard drive when you least expect it..) but will post the link tomorrow..


1, http://spotlight.soundfuturesdirect.com/podcast/

2, http://tdfanszone.soundfuturesdirect.com/podcast/

'Night all!

From the Grave

There is room for all manner of creative electronic music and some of the greats for me have been the more coherent and melodic pieces such as Tangerine Dream - Ricochet, Jean Michel Jarre - Oxygene, Brian Eno - Apollo, Vangelis - Heaven and Hell and Kraftwerk - The Man Machine.

Each has their personal meaning for me (memories of impending big life changes at the end of Sixth Form listening to Ricochet, for instance), but I will never forget playing Oxygene to a friend soon after acquiring it and his comment "that's not music, that's an experience".

One of my personal favourites that has stood the test of time (and is also a good system test) is Tangerine Dream - Exit. Some wonderful melodies and killer bass rhythms.

Heaven and Hell, one of my all time favourite Vangelis pieces which always reminds of the late and very great Carl Sagan, as parts of it were used as the theme for his epic series, Cosmos... :)

Indeed Dave, and parts of Apollo were used in the minor cult classic Static.

Hmm, not heard of that one Martin. Looks interesting ;)

EM's moved on though - (Ed Buller's) Node, later Redshift and Ulrich Schnauss have pushed things on in different ways. I can't get my head round the blandness that seems to be so much of Tangerine Dream's current spewed output on the soundbites I've heard. I can't spend loads of dosh every year on the numerous releases hoping to find one good track amongst the elevsator music.....

Heh. Coincidentally I was listening to the Fripp & Eno discs a couple of days ago - great stuff. I really enjoy classic TD and Eno. I'm not familiar with the recent TD output, but Eno is still turning out music that I like - the recent LUX is particularly lovely.

My impression is that rhythm and repetition play a much bigger part in current electronic than they did in its "space music" ancestors, no doubt in part due to the influence of techno, and other forms of electronic dance music. But that's not to say that there's not a lot of straight-up electronic listening music being made today, it's just that there's been a lot of influence from the dancefloor to the living room (and back again). For exciting contemporary electronic music, a good label to keep an eye on is Raster Noton; Byetone's 'Symeta' is a modern classic. Or for something less cold and more organic, Amon Tobin's 'ISAM' (on Ninjatune) is sublime.

As a fan of early TD I can well understand the head scratching as to why anyone likes it, even at all.
I personally find a great deal of it sublime.

To even mention JMJ in the same sentence is akin to an opera buff stating all rock is the same - ie, Dire Straits & Opeth..

To even begin to understand how far in advance Rubicon is over and above anything else at the time you need to understand what was being used to make the music.
These were (for the time) highly advanced bits of kit, but almost laughable in todays world.

The VCO's (voltage controlled oscillators) regularly went out of tune, so when a great sequence starts to run, morphs and changes - it eventually goes way out and the entire setup needs to be re tuned and the next sequence set. During this phase, a fair bit of 'noodling' goes on.

Tangerine dream back then and probably up to the double live album were all about huge soundscapes and amazing sequences.
That changed slowly but surely into shorter, more dance orientated tracks, some aimed purely at films, where they made plenty of friends and money. Film scores need a huge amount of sound bites, not huge pieces. (Note - try the OST to DRIVE - amazing)

If you dislike Rubicon, you aint going to like Atem, Zeit or Alpha Centauri, so dont even bother.

If your preference is for JMJ then from Poland on you will find a lot more accessible and easy to get on with. I finished with them at Underwater Sunlight & Optical Race I would suggest you give them a try, you may just like them.

Now if you really want some fun - try and find early Redshift albums with Mark Shreeve at the helm.

They out dream the dream by a big margin, and use original kit.

Redshift by Redshift is still available, but from then on expect to pay a lot for Ether, Downtime, Siren etc - all of which use early TD riffs / sequences to start running.

Tangerine Dream used to appear on stage and use Pink Floyds Set the Controls as a dive in point for their own sequence and the concert onwards..