But while that was a fine record on its own terms, it couldn’t touch Zeit’s spectacular kosmische musik of the spheres.īuy the 16CD and double-Blu-ray release, In Search Of Hades: The Virgin Recordings 1973-1979. Its successor, 1973’s notably more accessible Atem, brokered Tangerine Dream’s international deal with Virgin Records. Zeit may have beamed in strange news from a very different star, but its alien presence was welcomed by the wider pop universe. On paper, this seems perhaps like a strange pairing: on one side, the space music pioneers Tangerine Dream, best known for scoring the scabrous tumult of the womb-like oceans of the mind on the other, William Friedkin’s masterpiece film about driving trucks laden with nitroglycerine through the decaying jungle roads of South America. Featuring ominous Moog (played by guesting Popul Vuh mainstay Florian Fricke) and jarring clusters of strings from the Cologne Cello Quartet, the glacial “Birth Of Liquid Plejades” was perhaps Zeit’s most otherworldly offering, though it barely shaded the bleak, monolithic “Nebulous Dawn,” the insistent, pulsing “Origins Of Supernatural Probabilities” or the title track’s genuinely spooky neo-choral washes. Frequently evoking the vast, weightless atmospheres of outer space, Zeit featured four mysterious, drone-based movements, each lasting the entirety of one side of vinyl. Yet, while Alpha Centauri signaled that the Berlin band were taking their first brave strides into the future, the record’s contents only barely hinted at the giant leap Froese and co would make with Zeit, released on August 2, 1972.Ĭrucially, though, it was also compelling. Less impenetrable than the sometimes willfully obscure Electronic Meditation, Alpha Centauri provided an unlikely commercial breakthrough for Tangerine Dream, as it sold a healthy 20,000 copies on release in November 1971. Listen to Zeit on Apple Music and Spotify. However, while it was still largely driven by organic instrumentation, including flutes, Froese’s Hendrix-ian guitar squalls and newly arrived second lieutenant Christopher Franke’s drum kit, the band’s second LP, Alpha Centauri, featured a significantly heavier reliance on emerging electronic technology and layers of atmospheric keyboards, paving the way for their third LP, Zeit. Everybody…has a different understanding of what comes from the stage.Glued together from dissonant elements of musique concrète, jazz-rock improvisation, and prime mover Edgar Froese’s primitive tape collages, Tangerine Dream’s 1970 debut, Electronic Meditation, bore scant relation to the eerily pristine proto-electronica with which the pioneering German outfit would shortly become synonymous. As Froese himself put it: “We believe that each single member of the audience has to be a musician too. These were the first two of no less than 16 UK Top 10 chart albums over a 13-year spell, in a loyal relationship between the band and their fans. The band would only better that chart position with the following year’s No.12 success Rubycon. Maybe it would be easier if it was titled 'The Best Of The Blue Years' to avoid disappointment, as at least you get the epic Streethawk theme. It enjoyed a 15-week chart run and No.15 peak there, despite very little airplay. referencing The Best Of Tangerine Dream (CD, Compilation) CHIP 75 If this compilation is anything to go by, it's just proof that 80's Tangerine Dream were a bit, well, shite. In the UK, where imports of the band’s pre-Virgin albums had sold a reported 25,000 copies, the title eventually sold an estimated 100,000 units. Listen to uDiscover Music’s Tangerine Dream Best Of playlist. A two-week run and a No.196 peak in the US was a modest start, but it was the first of seven chart albums there in a dozen years. But in the British and American markets, it opened doors. Strangely, Phaedra was not a big success in Germany, where the band had been established for some years. Froese also painted the image on the album cover Baumann added organ, electric piano and flute, and Franke the Moog. The Tangerine Dream LP was produced by founder Edgar Froese, who played mellotron, guitar, bass and organ and, like his colleagues Peter Baumann and Christopher Franke, the VS3. Phaedra was recorded at the Manor, the studio inside a manor house in Shipton-on-Cherwell in Oxfordshire, England, which was already celebrated by early 1974 as the location in which Mike Oldfield had created Tubular Bells. Features 2 tracks from the '60s psych-rock band that preceded Tangerine Dream, The Ones, plus rare tracks from the early '70s era of the band when they were at their most adventurous, composing epic pieces that clocked in at over 10 minutes each such as 'Asteroid Agenda' and 'Overture' CD jewel case with special metallic silver O-card.
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