By contrast, the opening “Continuum” sounds almost hemmed in by the conventions of percussion, its rather strait-laced drum-machine beats unworthy of the synth sprawl they sheepishly try to rally into place. “You’re Always On Time” makes up for its weakling eight-minute runtime with one of the album’s strongest melodies, a mournful synthesizer riff that is just unpredictable enough to keep it from lapsing into parody, while “Along the Canal” combines a gloomy chord sequence with a synth effect that patters like rain along a gutter, a mixture of form and function so emotively epic it could paint the Grand Canyon blue. Tangerine Dream are grandmasters of space and melody, and “Raum” shows them at their architectural best, their work as airily palatial as a castle made of cloud. Raum’s 15-minute title track, in particular, is a throwback to the omniscient ambience of 1972’s Zeit, a shimmering Moog bassline summoning forth synth sweeps as potent as rocket fuel, slowly tapering off into the elegant, dreamy drones of Hoshiko Yamane’s electric violin, before the Moog returns to guide the listener home. After 2014’s Phaedra Farewell Tour, Froese decided that the group should return to the formula of synths, sequencers, and electric violin that Tangerine Dream employed in the ’70s and ’80s, “not copying it but recreating that style with present technology,” said Quaeschning. Raum doesn’t really break any barriers, but nor was it intended to. In the late ’70s and early ’80s their sound became slicker and more cinematic, soundtracking films like Sorcerer, Thief, and even Risky Business. Their first studio album, 1970’s Electronic Meditation, featured eerie found sounds among more conventional rock instruments, and from 1971’s Alpha Centauri onward-three years before Kraftwerk’s Autobahn-Tangerine Dream threw themselves into electronic instrumentation. Like the Dead, Tangerine Dream were once innovators, a kind of proto- Kraftwerk best enjoyed semi-horizontally while ensconced in a bean-bag chair. According to Thorsten Quaeschning, who has been with Tangerine Dream since 2005, Froese and his wife Bianca made plans for the band to continue after his death, and Raum was produced with access to Froese’s Cubase arrangements and tape archive of recordings from 1977 to 2013. Raum is the second album the group has released since Froese’s passing, and he features in both spirit and sound. More information and tickets can be found here.Even the death of founding member Edgar Froese in 2015 could not stop a band as enduring as Tangerine Dream. Tangerine Dream play a live A/V performance at MIRA Festival, which takes place on the 8th-10th November. “the masters of distorted drones, pads and melodies.” *bonus!* Trent Reznor / Atticus Ross – ‘Like Home’ (from ‘Gone Girl’) “loop-music meets the Scandinavian longing for wideness.”ġ1. “beautiful subtle, rhythmic with many things to discover.” Christian Löffler – ‘Myiami’ (from ‘Mare’) “my idea of electronic soundtrack – music.”ĩ. Thorsten Quaeschning – ‘Light Reading Lamp’ (from ‘Cargo’) “wonderful evolving with a great dynamic.”Ĩ. Ulrich Schnauss – ‘Monday Paracetamol’ (from ‘A Strangely Isolated Place’) “THE master, perfect structured, every note and sound counts.”ħ. Brian Eno – ‘Small Craft on a milk sea’ (from ‘Small Craft on a milk sea’) “probably one of the best Mellotron ambient pieces ever written.”Ħ. Edgar Froese – ‘Epsylon in Malaysian Pale’ (from ‘Epsylon in Malaysian Pale’) Great melodies and digital synth charm.”ĥ. Christopher Franke – ‘Black Garden View’ (from ‘Pacific Coast Highway’) “I really love the slightly detuned poly-melodies and sequences.”Ĥ. Rival Consoles – ‘I Think So’ (from ‘Persona’) “the master of awareness, knowledge, taste and richness of detail.”ģ. Alva Noto – ‘Uni Version’ (from ‘Unieqav’) “for me the perfect happy medium between destruction and romantic.”Ģ. R Beny – ‘Pale Fire’ (from ‘Cascade Symmetry’) Having reformed in 2015 following a hiatus due to the death of Froese, the group released their ‘Quantum Gate/ Quantum Key’ earlier this year.Īhead of their appearance at this year’s MIRA festival in Barcelona, where the group will be performing a live A/V set, the group’s Thorsten Quaeschning outlines the ten best ambient electronic works below.ġ. With a giant discography comprising over 100 albums, the persistent group was founded in 1967 in its Berlin base by Edgar Froese, and since then have gone through many mutations and evolutions, while still continuing to put music out into the world. Widely considered the godfathers of cosmic and ambient music, they are a hallowed name within electronica. When electronic acts are made to list their musical influences, Tangerine Dream is a name that’ll crop up time and time again.
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