![]() ![]() There seems to be more exploratory fun and a more personal sound as they drop in surreal free falls in the midst of their dramatic compositions. But unlike so many of thier post-Virgin releases, this 1996 albums doesn’t bludgeon you with canned synthesizer bombast. Goblins’ Club recalls the 80’s sound of Tangerine Dream when they were just adding more aggressive rhythms and clearly defined melodies to their fanciful spacescapes. Another two-sided excursion that moves from the quietest solo piano spot to thundering sequencers from the heavens. Ricochet was their first live album, although it was all new materiel and sounds like a studio recording. Part of the classic quartet of albums, this was their most commercial release to date and the first album with real melodies. Originally a two sided work, Tangram is a multi-movement opus sometimes sabotaged by episodic writing, but still with some haunting themes amidst the pounding sequencers and more melodic invention than most prior Dream albums. This is one of the last long-form Dream recordings. This 1972 recording is a drone zone manifesto, and a beautifully enveloping work free of melody, rhythm and just about any other conventional music signpost. Ambient before ambient, but owing much to Gyorgy Ligeti pieces like “Atmospheres,” synths, gliss guitar, organ and “noise generators” unfold in undulating, slow motion patterns across what was a double LP. Playing with a cello quartet, it’s a journey of interwoven tones phasing through each other from acoustic to electric to something entirely new. It’s been called their most experimental CD, but I think it’s their most thoughtful, controlled and uncontrived album. Subsequent live albums would be more pre-programmed performances. This was really the truly last live recording from the group. Johannes Schmoelling had been in the group for a while at this point and his influence is felt in gorgeous melodies and rhythms that have you ricocheting off your seat and between your headphone cups. ![]() This was the Dream working with a precision and structure that earlier works didn’t have, but they were still creating in long-form with a fair amount of improvisation. Listening to Logos, from 1982, you can hear why. Tangerine Dream was an exciting live band in the 70s and half of the 80s. Phaedra is transitional, retaining some of the avant-garde Ligeti-esque texturalism from Zeit on the mellotron drenched “Mysterious Semblance at the Strands of Nightmare,” but the title track and Rubycon, an album length composition were definitive journeys into inner space. The Dream bound them in interlocking patterns, mellotron chords and synthesizer textures. The classic trio of Edgar Froese, Christoph Franke and Peter Baumann found the secret of rubber band sequencer patterns discovered by Tonto’s Expanding Headband 2 years earlier. These are the signature Dream albums, the blueprint for every retro-space artist out there, the sound that influenced ambient, techno, and more. Phaedra and Rubycon have always been a pair for me and that pair is half of a quartet with Ricochet and Stratosfear. On the air I said I’d pick five, but I decided to go with ten. Everybody…has a different understanding of what comes from the stage.10 Best Tangerine Dream Albums From Number Six of 20 Icons of Echoes As Froese himself put it: “We believe that each single member of the audience has to be a musician too. These were the first two of no less than 16 UK Top 10 chart albums over a 13-year spell, in a loyal relationship between the band and their fans. The band would only better that chart position with the following year’s No.12 success Rubycon. It enjoyed a 15-week chart run and No.15 peak there, despite very little airplay. In the UK, where imports of the band’s pre-Virgin albums had sold a reported 25,000 copies, the title eventually sold an estimated 100,000 units. Listen to uDiscover Music’s Tangerine Dream Best Of playlist. A two-week run and a No.196 peak in the US was a modest start, but it was the first of seven chart albums there in a dozen years. But in the British and American markets, it opened doors. Strangely, Phaedra was not a big success in Germany, where the band had been established for some years. Froese also painted the image on the album cover Baumann added organ, electric piano and flute, and Franke the Moog. The Tangerine Dream LP was produced by founder Edgar Froese, who played mellotron, guitar, bass and organ and, like his colleagues Peter Baumann and Christopher Franke, the VS3. Phaedra was recorded at the Manor, the studio inside a manor house in Shipton-on-Cherwell in Oxfordshire, England, which was already celebrated by early 1974 as the location in which Mike Oldfield had created Tubular Bells. ![]()
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