Jacob's Tangerine Dream Blog

Jacob's Tangerine Dream Blog

Video reviews: "Irrlicht" and "Phaedra".

reviews - 70'sPosted by Jacob Pertou Sat, August 14, 2010 17:00:56


180 grams of "Rubycon" anno 2010.

reviews - 70'sPosted by Jacob Pertou Sat, April 24, 2010 02:01:04

Mojo, May 2010.

From Genesis To Oscillations

reviews - 70'sPosted by Jacob Pertou Sat, December 19, 2009 13:35:29

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MOJO Magazine, circa 1996.

Phaedra peaking at #38

reviews - 70'sPosted by Jacob Pertou Sat, December 19, 2009 13:11:06

Phaedra TANGERINE DREAM

With its glacial synth soundscapes, this was chill-out 20 years early.

TANGERINE DREAM MAY have been making music for nearly 40 years, but for many fans 1974's Phaedra remains their most revered release. A watershed album for electronic rock. It launched Tangerine Dream's international career, which, with founder Edgar Froese still on board, continues to this day.

Sculptor-cum-guitarist Froese launched the Berlin band in 1967 after a Summer of Love spent hanging out in Spain with Salvador Dali. Joined by drummer Klaus Schulze and guitarist/cellist Conrad Schnitzler, they cut their Electronic Meditation debut in 1970. Three subsequent albums, released on the German label Ohr found the band replacing rock orthodoxy with eerie electronic atmospheres, but losing Schulze and Schnitzler in the process.


WITH REPLACEMENT DRUMMER Christopher Franke and organist Peter Baumann, synth-driven 'head' albums such as 1972's Zeit and 1973's Atem would become cult listening among lank-haired students everywhere. Not everyone was convinced, however. At a gig in Paris, one unimpressed fan hurled a plastic bag of marmalade on to the group's keyboards, ruining them for the rest of the show.

But Tangerine Dream had their staunch supporters- DJ John Peels endorsement inspiring Richard Branson, who signed the band to his fledgling Virgin label in 1973. Froese, Franke and Baumann were installed fort hree weeks at the Manor Studio in Oxfordshire. By now Franke had abandoned drums,
preferring a telephone exchange-like Moog modular synthesizer system purchased from The Rolling Stones (who'd never learned how to use it). The set-up was deployed, in tandem with Froese and Baumann’s Mellotron, organ, electric piano, flute and VCS3 synth, to create the womb-like sound of the album's four tracks.

With lengthy, portmanteau songs and a title borrowed from Greek myth, Phaedra pushed the usual prog-rock buttons. Musically, however, it avoided some of the genre’s convolutions. The Froese-written, 15-minute title track is certainly a trip in itself, but, punctuated by the hypnotic sequencer arpeggios that would become the band s hallmark, its glacial keyboards and ghostly melodies seem oddly timeless.

Despite its unwieldy title, Mysterious Semblance At The Strand Of Nightmares, is just as enduring. A lulling Mellotron étude. not far removed from Brian Eno's ambient works, the track develops into something approaching sci fi baroque before dissolving into a morass of synth squiggles; yet somehow even here Froese keeps any bombast at arm’s length. Similarly, with its cathedral organ, Movements Of A Visionary has more in common with 2Oth-century French composer Olivier Messiaen than Rick Wakeman, while the closing Sequent C paints a delicate, vaguely oriental vista that could easily have been lifted from a Ryuichi Sakamoto album. In fact, much of Phaedra would appeal to the latter-day chill-out fraternity, while the overall sound anticipates ambient techno and trance by some 20 tears.


DESPITE THE ORIGINAL vinyl Side 2 being mistakenly mastered backwards (nobody noticed), Phaedra would prove to be Tangerine Dream's commercial and critical peak. Contemporary reaction mixed admiration with puzzlement. Rolling Stone’s review was typical: "It is an amazing record with the most effective results with the synthesizer and Mellotron today: it could become the most unusual record of the year."

Less ambivalent were its commercial credentials Phaedra peaked at Number 15 in the UK in April 1974 and stuck around for most of the summer. Even now, it’s still easy to hear why it remains so special.
David Sheppard

Notes
Label Virgin
Released 1974
Personnel Peter Baumann (organ, synthesizer, flute); Christopher Franke (keyboards, Moog synthesizer); Edgar Froese (organ, bass, guitar, mellophonium, Mellotron, VCS3 synthesizer)
Further Listening Rubycon (1975)

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Billboard recommends...Encore!

reviews - 70'sPosted by Jacob Pertou Sat, October 24, 2009 11:07:33

TANGERINE DREAM–Encore, Virgin 35014 (CBS). Produced by Tangerine Dream. This live, double LP set offers a hefty taste of this pioneering German synthesizer group, which gained recent notoriety with the soundtrack from "Sorcerer." Recorded live during its recent American tour, the set contains one composition per side of its often symphonic, soaring multi-layered sound, that makes use of (according to the cover credits) some 20 different synthesizers. Best cuts: Pick your side.

Billboard, 19th November 1977.

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