Tangerine Dream
There were two turning points for West Berlin art
student-turned-rock guitarist Edgar Froese.
The first was working with - and writing music for - Salvador
Dali. The second was a support slot on Jimi
Hendrix's 1967 tour
of Germany.
These events inspired a desire
to create new music, and synthesizers gave him the tools. The
result was Tangerine Dream - pioneers of Kraütrock, and
once described by American critic Lester Bangs as sounding like "silt sleeping on the ocean
floor".
Core members over the years
have included Froese and Chris Franke as well as Peter Baumann,
who went on to start the Private Music label. The band also later
added Jerome Froese, Edgar's son, whose photos as a baby can be
found in the artwork to their early
albums.
Over 25 years or so, the Tangerine
Dream sound moved from the droning nightmares of Zeit, to the
mesmerising
sequencer-based Rubycon and Ricochet in the 70s, to the sparkling
high-tech rock of the 80s.
In recent years, they moved
toward shorter, song-based pieces that seem superficial and
predictable compared to their early
work.
Their 1975 Rubycon album is the zenith of the band's exploration of
ever-shifting synthesized textures and rhythmic layers, with
sounds adrift in endless space or echoing through vast
subterranean caverns. And when the sequenced four-note basslines
kick in, there is a vivid sensation of movement, sometimes
floating upwards through deep water, sometimes hurled across the
galaxy . . .
By the mid 70s, though, lead-boffin
Froese had signed to Virgin and was turning out blippy electronic
abstraction at a phenomenal rate, releasing 13 albums in a
decade.
A cult phenomenon for decades,
Tangerine Dream gained wider recognition when the group's music
attracted the interest of film director William Friedkin, which
resulted in their score to the film Sorcerer
and the beginning of a large number of
soundtracks.
Their music for the Tom Cruise
film, Risky Business, probably attracted the
most attention.
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