The members of Tangerine Dream continued to hone their craft as pioneers of the early days of electronica, and the mid-'70s proved to be a time of prosperity and musical growth for the trio of Chris Franke, early member Peter Baumann, and permanent frontman Edgar Froese. The three of them had been delivering mysterious space records on a regular basis, and their growing confidence with early synthesizers (the best that money could buy at the time) made them virtuosos of the genre, even as they kept things organic and unpredictable with gongs, prepared piano, and electric guitar. Rubycon has aged gracefully for the most part, making it a solid companion (and follow-up) to their 1974 album, Phaedra…
The members of Tangerine Dream continued to hone their craft as pioneers of the early days of electronica, and the mid-'70s proved to be a time of prosperity and musical growth for the trio of Chris Franke, early member Peter Baumann, and permanent frontman Edgar Froese. The three of them had been delivering mysterious space records on a regular basis, and their growing confidence with early synthesizers (the best that money could buy at the time) made them virtuosos of the genre, even as they kept things organic and unpredictable with gongs, prepared piano, and electric guitar. Rubycon has aged gracefully for the most part, making it a solid companion (and follow-up) to their 1974 album, Phaedra…
From mid October to late November 1982, TD toured in Europe performing 31 gigs at all in Austria, Hungary, Yugoslavia, the UK, Belgium, West and East Germany. The concert at the Dominion Theatre in London was released only a few weeks after on the record Logos Live. According to Johannes Schmoelling, this is one of his favourite albums. He considers "the live concept and the smooth transition between one idea and the next to be the key of the album's success." In 1995 Virgin re-released the album on CD in the so-called "Definitive Edition" series, featuring the original front cover artwork. For this release, the two compositions Logos, Part One and Logos, Part Two have been mixed together, forming the track Logos of some 45 minutes length.
Tangerine Dream scored director Michael Mann's film debut, Thief (released as "Violent Streets" outside of the U.S. market), adding their patented pulses, blips and whooshes to the film's highly stylized visual scenes. While TD's electronic music is a natural fit for soundtracks, it doesn't bring out the best in the band; for the most part, this soundtrack contains swatches of a larger canvas, building up a small head of steam in the span of four or five minutes but not raising the musical discussion above the level of mere mechanical chitchat. Most of the songs follow a set pattern, with Chris Franke slurring his sequencers under a thin fog of synthesizers, topped by a piercing and pithy melody. An engaging melody on "Beach Theme" makes it one of the album's better tracks, while "Trap Feeling" has a delicacy that compares favorably to Brian Eno's Music for Films…
Tangerine Dream experiments with an ever-widening lexicon of sound on White Eagle, though the arrangements tend to suffer for it. The album's principle work is "Mojave Plan," a four-movement, 20-minute song that represents some of the darkest music they've recorded in a while. Perhaps it was Edgar Froese's fear of nuclear annihilation that fueled this bleak view of the future, but the piece's effectiveness is undermined by the decision to continually dabble with different sounds. Where earlier extended pieces tended to move the listener from point A to point B, "Mojave Plan" doesn't flow so much as fuse disjointed sections together. The remaining songs are more cohesive, though Christopher Franke's sequencer patterns, while initially intoxicating, remain static here…
Rubycon is the sixth major release and sixth studio album by German electronic music group Tangerine Dream. It was released in 1975. It is widely regarded as one of their best albums. Rubycon further develops the Berlin School sequencer-based sound they ushered in with the title track from Phaedra. Although not quite matching the sales figures for Phaedra, Rubycon reached number 10 in a 14-week run, their highest-charting album in the UK.
Esoteric Recordings are pleased to announce the release of a newly remastered edition of 'Poland-The Warsaw Concert' by Tangerine Dream. On the 10th December 1983, Edgar Froese, Chris Franke and Johannes Schmoelling performed a legendary concert in the Ice Stadium in Warsaw - a unique event, given the political situation in Poland at the time. The resulting 'live' album was issued as a double LP set on the Jive Electro label the following year to great acclaim. Of all the subsequent CD releases of the album, only two early editions, released in the USA & Germany, featured the full un-edited version of the original double LP. This newly remastered Edition fully restores the Entire Unedited Double LP Version to Compact Disc and includes a Lavishly Illustrated Deluxe Booklet with New Essay.
Electronic trio Tangerine Dream embrace their equipment and take their audience on an actual journey through this especially good, two-part showcase recorded live in France and Britain. Featuring the early and memorable lineup of Chris Franke, Edgar Froese, and Peter Baumann, Ricochet continuously evolves to the next plateau of pulsing experimentation without getting lost or over-indulgent like other bands of the genre. This album finds the three at a time when they knew exactly what they were doing; rocking without the drums, and looking over their shoulder to make sure the audience was still enjoying themselves. It takes a snapshot of the band when they were young, influential, and at the height of the genre.
This was the first TD album to incorporate lyrics and vocals (from Steve Jolliffe, who also contributed wind instruments and keyboards). By this point, the nucleus of the band was down to Edgar Froese and Christopher Franke, with the sound centering more on shifting arpeggiation over percussive rhythm structures, with "Madrigal Meridian" being an impressive example of this. Jolliffe's vocal contributions on "Bent Cold Sidewalk" and "Rising Runner Missed by Endless Sender" provide an aggressive edge that effectively catapults the listener from the hypnotic pulse that Tangerine Dream are best known for - still, it's by no means a failed experiment, though it does make Cyclone one of the least useful TD albums for working up a good meditative state.