With Q and Frick is basically all live, with only a few effects and live looping coming from Albeton.
As someone who has played live concerts with backing material, it is a knotty ethical issue, I remember one concert I played where it went really well but because I'd used some backing material I felt a bit conflicted at the end. No doubt TD felt the same. I also think the comments about the one-key / structured approach are spot on; and by the end of the seventies EF and CF did want to put more structure into their music. Still, now I've read all the comments above, I feel ambiguous about the concerts I attended in the early eighties. I was young, and massively mind-blown by those gigs. The main thing that "saves" them I suppose is that they were performing lots of great new material.
As we are on the subject - the three 'systems' TD use live: TD with Ulrich involved (2018-2019) 1. Song-based Albeton backing tracks - plays from the start until the finish with the only control being that drums can be faded out etc. Over this they play melody, chords and violin. 2. Open-ended Albeton tracks - songs can last anything from 5-20 minutes - where the order of each loop can be controlled in real-time, so basically the structure totally changes from night to night. And once again they play live lead lines over the top (LOART, BETRAYAL etc etc). This drives the lighting guy nuts as he never knows how long a track will last, so the video and lights are improvised to fill in 3. The Sessions: Everything live - no software* being used at all, only a key and tempo are decided before. Everything is synced to Thorsten's ERM master clock. Modular sequencing from Thorsten (at the start) and then Ulrich at the end (*using his Sonic Core Scope Xite-1 digital modular that can only be accessed via a laptop, it doesn't have any knobs or switches - although zero sound is actually coming from the computer. Ulrich mainly did the more granular sounds or 'extreme' sounds - while Thorsten is doing the more bassy sequences which are controlling the Moogs - Minimoog RME and Mintaur. Thorsten's modular is now fully polyphonic and can do up to 32 sequences at the same time - including ratcheting and clacking percussion clicks). Mellotron sounds come from Thorsten and Hoshiko (choir or flute come from her Electro-Harmonix MEL9 pedal). Live sampling and looping is also done on the fly on Thorsten's laptop. All 64 channels of sound are always being recorded into their 32 x 2 digital hard disk recorders (pre-fade - which in English means that afterward you can remix the entire Session - the live mixing is done from iPads which control the Behringer X-32's). Mostly shows would start with a pulse coming from Ulrich's digital synth (Roland JD-XA), over which Hoshiko builds up live loops of violin & FX pedals, but the structure was changing all of the time. Sometimes Thorsten would start with clouds of ebow guitar loops or just a drone over which he would play tron flute with Minimoog Voyager bass. Towards the end of 2019? (I should check) Thorsten got more into Ableton and did some percussion and weird feedback effects that he could trigger live (even his modular had a sampler that would do field effects etc). All of the sequencing was done by step sequencers (Schrittmacher and Polyend SEQ). The final bassy drones are from Thorsten were he tapes a note down on his Voyager and everyone brings it to a close. The lighting and video is improvised throughout
ps. The microphones onstage are for communication between the musicians during their sessions...this system doesn't always work if Thorsten is playing a keyboard that is too far away from the mic and sometimes he has to wave at Ulrich/Paul to tell them to bring the session to a close - otherwise, they would build it up for the next section
@Stephen Palmer ...It seems that it started way before with on the one hand the coming back of Baumann into the fray after his disappearance just before the Australian tour, you just have to listen to Romance 76 to see how keen he was on melodies and structuring his music (B side particularly, at the time he claimed in interviews that his favourite composer was Monteverdi which says it all) and on the other hand, came obviously the composing of Sorcerer… they met Friedkin in April 75, so this is definitely way before the end of the 70’s and Baumann’s departure. IMHO if one is responsible for bringing some structuring into 70's TD it is Baumann! Stratosfear was already a very structured album and it sounds so much like Romance 76.
They didn't meet Bill in April 1975, it was far earlier and he was at The Manor while they were recording Rubycon (Source: NME: 8.3.75, The Australian 13.3.75) Fachblatt May 1975 EF: Eine Australien – Tournee mit zehn Konzerten haben wir ja im März hinter uns gebracht, ebenso ein Konzert am 2. April in der Royal Albert Hall (als erste deutsche Rock-Formation übrigens). Jetzt steht eine für Mai geplante erste US – Tournee an, des weiteren schreiben wir für William Friedkin (Regisseur von “Exorzist” und “Brennpunkt Brooklyn”) die Musik für die nächsten vier Filme. Schließlich gibt’s auch einige Aktivitäten rund um die Veröffentlichung unseres neuen Albums “Rubycon”. Now a first US tour is planned for May, and we are also writing the music for the next four films for William Friedkin.
@24db Did not mean this was the 1st time, more when it gelled into his mind that they could be the ones making the soundtrack, rushed my message!! Making amends with following quote... William FRIEDKIN- “The whole notion of the film I later made came that evening*. I started to see the images of the movie that ultimately became SORCERER” *St Benno Kirche MUENCHEN [25 avril 1975] PS: Do not ask me where I got it from...but it is a genuine one!! Now it would be more interesting to know when they started working on the soundtrack, but this I do not know, I assume it was soon after, anyway before the end of 75 (?)
RE: TD ‘75 In terms of the band’s stylistic evolution (structures and “melodies”), the change was pretty noticeable too in a live context- pre- Australia and RAH and post. IMHO mid-75 was a turning point- Baumann's return and working on Friedkin's movie must have played a significant part. This is to me when this major change occurred.
I wonder whether necessity was the mother of invention. The need to produce shorter, more focussed pieces for the Sorcerer soundtrack may have inspired them to adopt the new more compact style of music. FWIW I saw the film again a couple of years ago, and was surprised how little of the Tangs' music is featured.
@ciderglider @24db would have all the right material to back this up; but as far as I can remember neither Froese nor Baumann seemed happy with the use Friedkin had made of their music. At least certainly Baumann. Shame this soundtrack was brilliant- a film in itself.
Everything more or less that Bill said about working with TD was bull**** and doesn't work against a timeline. In fact, I seem to remember his autobiography opens with a paragraph where he said he couldn't remember much of what happened in his life and many 'facts' had to be pieced together from friends. He couldn't have first met TD in April 1975, when he had already met them for the first time in Feb 1975, or more likely when he was promoting The Exorcist in Germany in 1974. Here's what Bill claimed as 'his' truth: The Exorcist was about to open, so I went on a long European tour in late 1974 (actually Sept 20). When I got to Frankfurt, I asked the Warner Brothers rep “what do you do at night around here?” because it seemed like a pretty quiet city. He said, “well, there’s an interesting new electronic rock band,” and that was very new at that time. “They’re playing in an abandoned church in the Black Forest.” I asked if they were good and he said “They’re great. They’re unique.” I said, “let’s take a ride out there” he said, “well, the concert starts at midnight.” Jesus. Frankfurt is 246km away from the Black Forest - Munich is a four hour car ride away. The St Benno Kirche gig didn't start at midnight (it started at 8.00pm), nor was it in 1974 But we drove out there, and it was an abandoned church in the heart of the Black Forest. The St Benno Kirche wasn't abandoned and it's located in the middle of Munich I didn’t know what to expect but the place was packed. There must have been a thousand people and there were no lights. No stage lights. No spot lights. They played on what was the altar, and the only light in the room while they played was the electronic lights from their instruments. There were only three guys and they were all electrified; Guitar, drums, and Edgar was playing a synthesizer. No guitar or drums were there They played for well over three hours...Unlikely compared with what they did at every other gig in 1974/75 close to four with long stretches of musical tones, occasionally extremely rhythmic. It was very hallucinatory. The audience was dead quiet. It was really trance-like, everybody was really into it and so was I. They were really emotional and the sound was so loud that you could feel it throbbing within you. It was very exciting, long stretches of chords and heavy beat. So afterwards, I asked if I could meet them. We talked briefly at about three in the morning; my German was terrible and Edgar’s English was not very good - totally untrue, Edgar's English was pretty good - even when stoned. I have audio interviews with him from 1973-1975 . They got the idea very quickly through a translator (they all spoke English) that I was interested in having them score a movie for me, a film that had not been written yet. I just said to them, “whatever I do next, I want you guys to score it.” I told them the story of what I was planning, this was Sorcerer, including the characters. I kept in touch with them, and some months later I sent them a script. I said, “you guys just write long stretches of music the way I heard you play it, and send me the music when you get it. Give me your musical impressions of what’s in that script, and what I’ve told you.” Baumann told me in person that he and Edgar wrote 4 or 5 of the tracks used on Sorcerer alone, as demo tapes - and Bill liked them so much that he used in the film - which is unlikely unless they were part of the 20 tracks that they did for the film (the film company lost 8 tracks, although Bill said about 5 or 6 years ago that he found the original cassette that he copied from the master tapes.TD couldn't have worked on SORCERER later than August 1975 as Walon Green and George Arnaud hadn't finished writing the script until the 1st of the month. NME March 8, 1975: "Friedkin arrived in London last week, has been spending most of his time with Dream at the Manor Studios working on ideas. It is understood that the band’s involvement in Friedkin’s films would be a major innovation, in that they would provide the soundtrack first, and only then would the story lines of the movie be decided."
Thank you so much 24db for your thorough and extremely substantial input. Your contributions are precious.
Hi all Have the missing 8 Sorcerer tracks ever materialised? Just asking as I did not know about their existence.
@24db RE: mid-’75- The Royal Albert Hall concert (April 2nd 1975) comes across now as a pivotal date, a sort of farewell to the Phaedra/ Rubycon mid-period style; apparently, Baumann was in the audience during the concert and gave some interviews or one interview (?) to some magazine(s) afterwards. I was not in the UK at the time... is this true? Which paper(s) was it?
The link between key TD members and classical music is actually not insignificant- skimming very swiftly and superficially through a few of these members… Schmoelling (classically trained / organ player + interest in Bach…), Haslinger (Vienna’s Academy of Music + interest in Penderecki among others …), Baumann (through his dad- Hermann Baumann famous horn player, soloist and composer + interest in Monteverdi among others…), Franke (Berlin Conservatory- Les Percussions de Strasbourg, this however needs to be confirmed, interest in John Cage and Penderecki among others…), Yamane, Frick (classically trained, composition classes, an opera, Steve Reich…) … and Froese if only for his obsession with Bach (Basso Continuo) and more contemporary composers such as Ligeti (ie-Wahn on Atem)… a topic worth further investigation… at least it might explain the format of many of their compositions (an idea Jarre is always keen to develop and so is Schulze), although this seemed to be a pretty wide spread tendency for most bands in the late 60's and early 70's. Let's say psychedelia for some, classical music for others and both psychedelia and classical for TD...
Edgar had so training as a pianist, but he stopped early (1)What were your earliest musical inspirations? I believe one of your girlfriends was a classical pianist and that your late father was fond of opera. Did any of this have a bearing on your musical direction? EDGAR: Fortunately not – otherwise I would have become a very mediocre classical piano player. So it was my positive destiny to have omit this even if it was a painful procedure. It’s true that I fell in love with a female student during my studies at the Berlin Academy of Arts – at the age of 19. She used to be an opera singer. So we were sitting by candle light in a romantic twilight atmosphere, she sang Mozart arias or her favorite aria ‘Ave Maria’ while I was playing like a stupid blinded idiot the grand piano to accompany her truly beautiful voice. It was absolutely unreal. One year later she left me for a 10 years older Porsche car distributor because her view of life was to become famous and to make money – she never did but I was heartbroken. Instead of playing piano sonatas I was too pissed off that I changed over to my second love – the guitar – and started playing Stones cover versions in Berlins’ underground scene – so destiny had a very good eye on me. My father actually was an amateur opera singer – but just behind closed doors as he was too shy to perform in public. The audience was sitting in one room, he sang in another one, but loud enough to be heard on the streets.
April 19, 1975 , Karl Dallas writing in Melody Maker (after TD had talks with Peter): “I discovered that with Michael we lost 50 to 60 per cent of the togetherness we had before. To try to build it up again with him would take at least 11 years. And so we’ve decided, very friendly again, that we must stay together.” Added Peter: “After ‘Rubycon’ we thought we had done as much as we could do in this way of three people sitting together to make music and improvising. We thought that maybe if we have new influences we will get new aspects inside us of the improvisation.” You see the problem Baumann is talking now of the time when he was outside the group and he is still saying “we, we, we,” as if he never left. “Now,” he goes on, “we are going to work very deeply on the connection during the improvising, to concentrate very deeply on the musical problems involved and work out a little more inter-action..."
Edgar (CREEM) Nov 1986: “I listen a lot to Mozart pieces–and my biggest teacher was Bach. I’m in the same mind as Jack Bruce, who said many, many years ago, ‘If you want to learn how to play the bass, then listen to Bach.’ “He is absolutely right. And I would go even a step further: If you want to understand what music is all about, listen to Bach. Not because he is German–if he would be Australian, that’s fine, you know? He was just a great man–the greatest man of all. I think if people have to share their royalties with someone in music history: 30 percent to Bach, 30 percent to Mozart, 30 percent maybe to Beethoven. And the rest, 10 per cent, you can put in your own pocket.”
I can see TD's music being a form of modern classical music from 1972 to 1976. They may not have been very good keyboardists, but way they approached the music sure fits that description to me. The influence and inspiration from the masters is apparent. Even the piano outro to "Invisible Limits" has a faint resemblance to the first movement of the Moonlight Sonata. Regards, Dave
Second POPOL VUH box set to be released soon. Includes: Cobra Verde- Agape Agape Love Love- Coeur de verre- Seligpreisung. Expensive for only 4 albums!!
@ 24db- Thanks for these great Froese and Baumann interview extracts. Very informative, taking note!! Cast an interesting human touch to these artists we have admired for so long but know relatively little about, although the jigsaw puzzle has become a great deal clearer over the years. Baumann / Froese a highly creative duo, to me pretty similar to Huetter / Schneider or Dinger/ Rother. Another difficult partnership, no doubt and somehow they never let off each other and this until the very end.
