Tonight we take another look at Tangerine Dream, covering the years 1977-1983.
I covered the early years in early 2015... play it while you can!
http://cod.ckcufm.com/programs/462/20591.html
I also played material from Ricochet and Stratosfear on previous programs so I'm going to skip ahead to the next phase of the band.
| Bent Cold Sidewalk Tangerine Dream - Cyclone - Virgin |
| We actually get to start a Tangerine Dream show with a Songs With Words segment :). Probably the most atypical album they put out for Virgin, with Froese and Franke being joined by Steve Jolliffe (vocals, flute, keys, etc.) and Klaus Krieger (drums), replacing Peter Baumann. The critics did not like an art rock Tangerine Dream and panned the release, but the band had been trying to respond to the influx of other artists adopting synths (David Bowie, Kraftwerk, increased popularity of Klaus Schulze) and this was an experiment that maybe didn't work for everyone.
Next up we reach back to the final Froese/Franke/Baumann release, the live Encore. |
| Monolight Tangerine Dream - Encore - Virgin |
| After the critical rejection of Cyclone, Jolliffe left the band and the remaining trio recorded the more "typical" Force Majeure. The album has a bit more of a rock feel still due to the presence of a drummer, generally atypical in Berlin school music (check out the Wolfgang Bock album or some Klaus Schulze releases for more of the same). |
| Thru Metamorphic Rocks Tangerine Dream - Force Majeure - Virgin |
| Krieger departed the group after Force Majeure and the group went back to an all-synth trio, recruiting Johannes Schmoelling. The Froese/Franke/Schmoelling line-up was stable from about 1980 to 1985. Their first release was actually a live recording in East Germany (Quichotte, later named Pergamon, and recently given life as an official bootleg release of the whole concert from which those albums were edited). I'll get to that in a future show.
The introduction of Schmoelling led to less improvised and increasingly composed music, with more intricate structures and harmonic complexity (mind you, early TD was very simple in that regard). The band also adopted digital synthesizers, and were informed by some of their popular electronic music contemporaries like Vangelis and Jean Michel Jarre. We will start the exploration of this trio with the second set/side of Tangram, and then a short piece from the Thief soundtrack. |
| Set 2 Tangerine Dream - Tangram - Virgin |
| Beach Scene Tangerine Dream - Thief - Virgin |
| Now we'll hit the next three studio albums. The band retained an aggressive release schedule for studio albums; Cyclone had come out in 1978, Force Majeure in 1979, and Tangram in 1980. Now would come Exit (1981), White Eagle (1982), and Hyperborea (1983).
There are interesting parallels between Tangerine Dream and Jean Michel Jarre in this period. Exit feature heavy use of the Fairlight, much as Jarre's Magnetic Fields album did. Hyperborea shows influences of world music, as did Jarre's Zoolook. |
| Remote Viewing Tangerine Dream - Exit - Virgin |
| White Eagle Tangerine Dream - White Eagle - Virgin |
| Hyperborea Tangerine Dream - Hyperborea - Virgin |
| Finally we close the show with another live track, this time from the album Logos, which actually came out between White Eagle and Hyperborea. Logos was recorded in 1982. While earlier concerts were entirely improvised, Logos sees a more "prepared" live experience that was to become the way forward for the band. We will cover some of the earlier live material in a subsequent show. |
| Logos Part II Tangerine Dream - Logos - Virgin |
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