All things Tangerine Dream

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by hEARt PhoniX, Nov 4, 2020.

  1. Jaar21

    Jaar21 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Watford UK


    [​IMG]
    @Slim Zooms
    RE: Oedipus Tyrannus

    To me among the band’s best albums. There is a particularly interesting use of the sequencer on Act 2- Battles and Act 3, all extremely subtle. Surprisingly enough too, Act 2- Battles is beginning like some sort of proto-techno number!! For this reason and many others… it fits in beautifully between Phaedra and Rubycon offering an even greater variety of styles to this stunning mid-Baumann period. Its welcome chronological inclusion is not without a positive repercussion on Rubycon’s ill repute as being a mere rehash of Phaedra!! Very much like the Phaedra Out-takes, a missing link between the Ohr period and Rubycon. It has got absolutely all the magic of mythical long “lost” albums. IMHO a **** album, without the shadow of a doubt.

    PS: Hope it will get some time a proper vinyl release.
     
    Last edited: Oct 12, 2021
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  2. Deibu

    Deibu I Dream of Tangerines

    Location:
    Arizona, USA
    I've not heard of such a comment as Rubycon being a rehash of Phaedra. Where was that nonsense said? A review somewhere?

    Regards,
    Dave
     
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  3. Jaar21

    Jaar21 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Watford UK
    @Deibu
    Usually, the aficionados of the Ohr period who at the time disapproved of the band having signed for Virgin. In the mid 70’s people who were fans of Zeit and Atem quite often disapproved of the sequencer-driven mid-period. They thought they had surrendered to the sirens' call! They clearly could not pick on Phaedra for obvious reasons so they took revenge on Rubycon. That said, reviews by music specialists were mostly excellent. Kraftwerk went through a similar patch with RadioActivitat with the big difference that some of the reviews were really vicious.

    PS: Julian Cope would seem to agree with this..."But the essential moment of their early Muse was clearly gone, as if evaporated in an instant." [Krautrocksampler/ Phaedra]. This is obviously NOT my opinion! He is actually a lot harsher than this later on... "(Atem) was the last of the classic releases..."
     
    Last edited: Oct 12, 2021
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  4. markreed

    markreed Forum Resident

    Location:
    Imber
    Never let Julian near Rockoon.
     
  5. Jaar21

    Jaar21 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Watford UK
    :agree:!
     
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  6. Deibu

    Deibu I Dream of Tangerines

    Location:
    Arizona, USA
    :laughup:

    Regards,
    Dave
     
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  7. Jaar21

    Jaar21 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Watford UK
    ...here is another merciless passage..."There was certainly no sell-out but, almost overnight, away went the True experiment. Away went the broken busted fingers. And gone forever was the snarling-in-the-dust intensity of those first four classic LPs, replaced, instead, by short 33 minute LPs of programmed pre-New age sequenced automaton synthesizer music." Ouch!!... towards the end of the passage, he adds more importantly, "...at the time they seemed an unforgivable tragedy after that blazing 4 LP birth and gestation." "They" standing for Phaedra, Rubycon, Stratosfear.
     
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  8. Deibu

    Deibu I Dream of Tangerines

    Location:
    Arizona, USA
    At least Mr. Kope has the first four albums to listen to for the rest of time...

    Regards,
    Dave
     
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  9. Beeb Fader

    Beeb Fader Forum Resident

    Location:
    Yorkshire,UK
    Cope's massively overrated opinion had it's day in the mid 90's when he thought he was the only person outside Germany who'd ever heard a Krautrock album, and we didn't have the resources we do now. His general rule of thumb being "as soon as everyone else started to like a band I went off them".
     
  10. Bruno Republic

    Bruno Republic Forum Resident

    Location:
    Toronto, Canada
    Indeed. I just don't get why his opinion has been so amplified. I expect that if he'd heard TD's shows prior to Electronic Meditation, he'd dismiss that as being the sell-out point. That album sounds to me like exactly what it is: three guys with not a lot of musical agreement between them experimenting with improvised noises in a studio. Cope seems to have a massive problem with any sort of conventional rhythm, tonality, or harmony. The early Virgin albums are great (well, as are the later ones) and they certainly didn't sound like anything else out there at the time.
     
  11. Jaar21

    Jaar21 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Watford UK
    RE: 1973/1974 Julian Cope

    I appreciate what you are all saying but I think it would be wrong to think that Julian Cope was off his trolley when he wrote this- he was actually far from being the only one to feel this way, at least in the 70’s. This is very much my experience of TD’s evolution at the time too- the big stylistic change when they signed for Virgin, created a big chiasm among fans. Now writing this in the 90's might have a touch of snobbism about it...I personally think he was genuine. They had set the bar very high with Zeit and Atem which were awesome opuses and fans thought they could never be surpassed.
     
    Last edited: Oct 12, 2021
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  12. Beeb Fader

    Beeb Fader Forum Resident

    Location:
    Yorkshire,UK
    Did that many people even have the OHR albums at the time? I bet Cope certainly didn't. I know Peel played them, but not so much as to create a large scale phenomenon I wouldn't have thought. And I would suggest that the major stylistic leap probably came between Rubycon and Ricochet. I think there is a definite line of development all the way to that point. Ricochet is then fresher, more technicolor in texture and more sequencer driven, but they were quite sparing with the sequencers at first, they still had that murky cosmic feeling. `Oedipus' backs this up...some of that could have been on `Zeit'. It's interesting to listen to the Phaedra out-takes on the `Hades' box where Edgar is actually playing a piano intro very much along the lines of Ricochet Part 2, although of course all of this was eventually discarded at the time. What I'm saying is I don't see a great leap from Atem to Phaedra ...what there was, was a change in the way they were marketed and to some extent they rode the wave Tubular Bells created for the reputation of Virgin Records, although of course Phaedra was a very different proposition to that ! I think Cope has his retrospective definition of what `Krautrock' was, and maybe he was right to some degree as to where TD fitted in, but it's hardly as if they began making commercial music overnight...they made music that SOLD, but it wasn't `commercial' !
     
  13. Slim Zooms

    Slim Zooms Senior Member

    Brilliant guys!
    This is so funny!
    :biglaugh:
     
  14. Jaar21

    Jaar21 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Watford UK
    @Beeb Fader

    Totally agree with Oedipus Tyrannus and then the transition twds Ricochet; this is very much the way I see things too, but I disagree a little as to the passage from from 73 to 74 if only for the use of the Big Moog, to me stylistically a very noticeable leap forward in spite of the "murky cosmic feeling" you are talking about, (a little like with Schulze from Timewind to Moondawn) but in the end and looking back no major revolution just nice and smooth transitions. Somehow, at the time it all felt very different...any new album had a seismic impact!!
     
    Last edited: Oct 12, 2021
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  15. Jaar21

    Jaar21 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Watford UK
    …didn’t know Schnauss and Roedelius played together at a Festival in Detmold in 2016...
    which means that Roedelius has now played with all the members of the "Quantum Dream"...
    and Baumann... and Schnitzler and probably Froese at the Zodiak...quite a journey...
    A collaboration with Exit Ghost Haslinger could be interesting.

    [​IMG]
     
    Last edited: Oct 12, 2021
  16. Jaar21

    Jaar21 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Watford UK
    ... my Schnauss Roedelius picture has disappeared... here is a famous Baumann Roedelius one at Paragon Studio instead. Great one. Looks like an intense session!

    [​IMG]
     
  17. Deibu

    Deibu I Dream of Tangerines

    Location:
    Arizona, USA
    I listened to the Dominion Concert today. It's amazing how sought-after a show from this tour was, and now we have it complete with beautiful sound quality. There may not have been as many extras in the Pilots set, but this concert is truly a gem. At first I was worried that it'd make Logos redundant, but it's really complimentary and no less worthy of a listen.

    Regards,
    Dave
     
  18. Slim Zooms

    Slim Zooms Senior Member

    Totally agree, the Dominion concert is a superb document :righton:
     
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  19. Jaar21

    Jaar21 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Watford UK
    RE: Probe 6.8- From ProgMag. [Jerry Ewing]


    German electronic prog pioneers Tangerine Dream have released a video for their brand new single, Raum, which you can watch in full below.

    It's taken from the band's upcoming EP, Probe 6-8, which will be released through Kscope on November 26. They will follow this with a brand new studio album, a follow-up to 2017's Quantum Gate which is currently being completed, in early 2022.

    "The music video to Raum was shot on a Canon Super-8 camera during late 2020 and early 2021," the band state. "It portrays the band’s creation process at their Berlin studio space and the surrounding neighbourhood of Neukölln. The choice of shooting on film was also an homage to Edgar Froese’s Super-8 videos, filmed while being on tour or in the studio with Tangerine Dream."

    Current Tangerine Dream members Thorsten Quaeschning, Hoshiko Yamane and Paul Frick composed and produced the new EP with full access to Edgar Froese’s Cubase arrangements and Otari Tape Archive with recordings from 1977 to 2013.

    The new five-track EP features three new songs; Raum, described as “a 15-minute bow to early live studio performances like Zeit and Phaedra, Para Guy, on which “the violin alternates and complements with a prominent Yamaha DX7 pad combined with field recordings from the nearby forest and canal”, and Continuum, which features a “repetitive sequence and broken beat shows glimpses of acid sounds and increasing choral atmospheres”.

    The B-side of Probe 6-8 features two remixes. Berlin-based composer and producer Grand River (Aimée Portioli) gave Raum her signature sound. Continuum was remixed by Berghain resident and Leisure System co-founder Sam Barker, who harnesses kick-less ambient techno since his praised 2019 debut album Utility.
     
  20. Eleventh Earl of Mar

    Eleventh Earl of Mar Somehow got them all this far.

    Location:
    New York
    Dominon was a shock when I first heard it - my reservations were the tech in 1982 could end badly, but it goes in with analogs and some fantastic digital synth leads and using samples for an entire piece and making that work

    Maybe in the top 5, I love the sound Schmoelling brought to the band - the band hadn't sounded this together since Stratosfear while live
     
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  21. 24db

    24db Forum Resident

    Location:
    London
    Sadly the tech didn't matter much (depending on your viewpoint) as they were using backing tape, with only Johannes actually playing anything major live (so only two keyboards had to work: Roland Jupiter-8 & Oberheim OB-X). The odd stab from Chris and Edgar was only for show, and of course, the equipment on stage was only wired-up purely for visual effect and to cover if the backing tape broke (as it did once in 1981). Chris's Moog 960 sequencers were synced up to the backing tape's for tempo changes as well. The miming continued until 2014 (moving from backing tape to DAT, MIDI, CD and then hard drive) when Edgar wanted TD to change things on the fly and a return to improvisation - it was one of the reasons why he brought Ulrich into the group.
     
    Last edited: Oct 14, 2021
  22. Eleventh Earl of Mar

    Eleventh Earl of Mar Somehow got them all this far.

    Location:
    New York
    Uh...

    How much was live? Sort of forgive it if the sequences were done on tape, but why would they even bother to perform post 1980?
     
  23. 24db

    24db Forum Resident

    Location:
    London
    Basically ALL of it - hence why if you listen to Johannes playing leads, he's actually playing a lead line over the backing tape melody in places - not always the same notes. Plus of course Chris might start a bit of white noise SFX or he and/or Edgar would add a few chordal things every so often - hence the bum notes on the Dominion recording (the only thing live on LOGOS is Adrian Hopkin's 'Thanks for being patient..." intro and the crowd noise - even the cover is rumoured to have been taken elsewhere - Sheffield). But basically, it's all backing tape at the time + Johannes/Paul (at a guess let's say 8-10% of what you heard).

    The problem was that with the advent of programmable synths they changed tone colour from bar to bar in their compositions, which meant you would have to press buttons within a millisecond and pray everything loaded, hundreds of time on stage (most of the equipment wasn't even reliable in the studio, never mind if you freighted to the end of the world and it's also the reason why their manager in the 1980s walked). Edgar knew he would need 30 players on stage to really perform it live (that's what he told another member of the band BTW). So what could they do? stop 'performing' the style they had on albums and go back to the style they had used pre-1978?

    I can't think of TD 'live' album that was released at the time that is truly (ie 100%) live, they've all been done in the studio or have had things changed:

    Ricochet: mostly studio with one section taken from their Croydon show - but with the band recreating their favourite bits from notes* that Edgar had taken while they auditioned the tapes from the tour. *Backed up by what the studio engineer recently said to a friend of mine

    Encore: 50% live, 50 studio

    Logos: 99.9% studio - there is a bum note on Dominion from memory, so perhaps it's from the actual show (but with backing tape of course, with a few notes played over the top). Some of the sounds on LOGOS isn't even the equipment they had on stage (The NED Synclavier never left their studio - mind you it was hired)

    Pergamon: 50/50

    Poland: 100% studio

    Livemiles: 100% studio
     
    Last edited: Oct 14, 2021
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  24. Bruno Republic

    Bruno Republic Forum Resident

    Location:
    Toronto, Canada
    For me, this casts doubt on EF's claim that Johannes abruptly left the group because they wouldn't let him bring the not-exactly-reliable PPG Waveterm on tour. But if they had most of the concert playing from a tape, why would it matter? Just one more part to mime...
     
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  25. uzn007

    uzn007 Pack Rat

    Location:
    Raleigh, N.C.
    Leaving aside the question of what was recorded on their so-called live albums, has anyone ever offered any insight into why they decided to change from almost-entirely-improvised concerts to completely-programmed concerts? I get that they used the backing tapes because they couldn't reproduce the albums on stage, but they had never attempted to do that in the past. When and why did it suddenly become important to start "reproducing" the studio albums precisely?
     

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