Electronica

Jean-Michel Jarre - Electronica 1: The Time Machine (2015)
EAC Rip | FLAC (tracks) | cuesheets+log | 67:35 mins | covers+booklet | 143 + 494 Mb
Style: Electronic, Ambient, New Age | Label: Sony Music

The French synthesizer icon has been teasing out details on the new album since April, revealing various high profile collaborators involved with the record. Electronica 1: The Time Machine is in fact a fully collaborative effort: all of its 16 tracks have Jarre working with another producer.

Cafe Electronica pushes the boundaries of Chill Out music to new limits. This eclectic collection is the musical equivilant of a 14-course meal. It's a virtual banquet of innovative Chill Out sounds, packed with creative music from around the world. Unlike its Epicurean counterparts, this collection will remain fresh for years.

In the late 1970s, Jean-Michel Jarre’s albums Oxygène and Équinoxe sold in their zillions, demonstrating that electronic music could be embraced by mainstream tastes. Almost 40 years later, the list of Jarre’s collaborators on Electronica 1: The Time Machine reads like a who’s who of electronic music, including Massive Attack, Moby, Air, Vince Clarke, Laurie Anderson and John Carpenter. True, by assembling such a stellar lineup, Jarre is reminding us of his status as a pioneer. But this does not feel like a cynical exercise - perhaps because Jarre was shrewd enough to work in person with his collaborators rather than remotely by sharing digital files. Jarre’s soaring washes of chords are present on tracks such as Conquistador (with French techno artist Gesaffelstein) and Zero Gravity (one of the last recordings of the late Edgar Froese of Tangerine Dream)…

Two years in the making, Close To The Noise Floor is a 4CD, 60-track set exploring the origins of electronica in the UK. Featuring tracks from key figures on the cassette label underground alongside early releases by future stars of the movement, this is part primitive rave, part synthesiser porn and part history lesson.

Complete Collection | All 92 Volumes | ~292 hours

Tangerine Dream - Tangerine Tree - complete - all 92 volume
Electronica, Krautrock, Progressive Rock | MP3@192kbps-256kbps CBR | 13.3 GB
Artwork included | all properly tagged | selected concerts from 1969 to 2006

Without doubt, the recordings of Tangerine Dream have made the greatest impact on the widest variety of instrumental music during the 1980s and '90s, ranging from the most atmospheric new age and space music to the harshest abrasions of electronic dance. Founded in 1967 by Edgar Froese in Berlin, the group has progressed through a full three dozen lineups (Froese being the only continuous member with staying power) and four distinct stages of development: the experimentalist minimalism of the late '60s and early '70s; stark sequencer trance during the mid- to late '70s, the group's most influential period; an organic form of instrumental music on their frequent film and studio work during the 1980s; and, finally, a more propulsive dance style, which showed Tangerine Dream with a sound quite similar to their electronic inheritors in the field of dance music.

All Music Guide