Re: Music of Tangerine Dream
Posted: Wed Dec 13, 2017 10:58 am
Picture the scene - breakfast in the Froese home; "What should we get little Jerome for his 17th birthday?", 'Oh, we'll give him a drum kit - help him to work off some teenage frustration."
At age 19, Jerome Froese made his first appearance on the Tangerine Dream album 'Lily On The Beach' playing lead guitar on one track 'Radio City'. A year later he was a full-fledged band member for 'Melrose' after which Paul Haslinger left and TD became a father-and-son duo. Which raises the question - Did Edgar pander too much too the musical ambitions of his son? It feels like Jerome wanted to be a Rock Star with BIG guitars and real drums rather than synths and sequencers, and the music is less inspired somehow. But there are a couple of albums where this approach really works rather well like 'Tyranny of Beauty'.
angerine Dream - 1995 Tyranny of beauty
The style has changed to an instrumental Prog-rock with heavy emphasis on guitars and a poppier drive with shorter tunes. This approach also is very-well realised on the concept-album 'Turn of the Tides' with a romantic theme of lost love. Opening with a bit of Mussorgsky's 'Picture at an Exhibition' you can even find flamenco guitars making an appearance here.
Youtube: Turn of the Tides
However it is a pity that these came out under the Tangerine Dream name as older fans deserted in droves, missing the long-form electronic soundscapes that TD had been best known for. Newer fans did come, though, especially in the USA where this more accessible sound was easier to grasp and the touring band featured no less than two tall, blonde Teutonic Goddesses with Linda Spa (sax, flute, keys) and Iris Camaa (percussion, vocals). These two remained as regular live musicians until Edgar's death.
A couple of discs to avoid would be the insipid 'Rockoon' and the Enigma-styled 'Goblin's Club' both of which aimed for the mainstream but didn't really deliver. And Jerome did several dance-remix collections to try to give TD some youth-appeal.
Worth checking out, though, is the high-octane blast of 'Arizona Live 1992'
Tangerine Dream 2004 Arizona Live Full Album
The group were also a hard-working supplier of soundtrack music for, mostly documentary, films and vast quantities of material were recorded and released. There is, later on, a return to a more ambient space-rock sound with 'Mars Polaris' (also released as 'Mars Mission Counter' with the same tracks in a different order !?) This music was performed live and actually sounds better when done on stage on the CD 'Rocking Mars'.
Tangerine Dream 2005 Rocking Mars Full Album
But Jerome's time was coming to a close, Edgar was pushing audibly to bring TD back into a more exploratory ambient area and brought in Thorsten Quaeschning to help with the album 'Jeanne D'Arc' where a different musical direction surfaces, a trip back to previous glories.
Tangerine Dream 2005 Jeanne D'Arc Full Album
Edgar had hoped that TD would push forward as a 3-piece team, but Jerome wasn't happy and decided, after 16 years, to leave the group and pursue a solo career.
And so Edgar, now backed by the sympathetic support of Thorsten Q, continued on into a new phase in the ever-developing musical universe that he had created.
At age 19, Jerome Froese made his first appearance on the Tangerine Dream album 'Lily On The Beach' playing lead guitar on one track 'Radio City'. A year later he was a full-fledged band member for 'Melrose' after which Paul Haslinger left and TD became a father-and-son duo. Which raises the question - Did Edgar pander too much too the musical ambitions of his son? It feels like Jerome wanted to be a Rock Star with BIG guitars and real drums rather than synths and sequencers, and the music is less inspired somehow. But there are a couple of albums where this approach really works rather well like 'Tyranny of Beauty'.
angerine Dream - 1995 Tyranny of beauty
The style has changed to an instrumental Prog-rock with heavy emphasis on guitars and a poppier drive with shorter tunes. This approach also is very-well realised on the concept-album 'Turn of the Tides' with a romantic theme of lost love. Opening with a bit of Mussorgsky's 'Picture at an Exhibition' you can even find flamenco guitars making an appearance here.
Youtube: Turn of the Tides
However it is a pity that these came out under the Tangerine Dream name as older fans deserted in droves, missing the long-form electronic soundscapes that TD had been best known for. Newer fans did come, though, especially in the USA where this more accessible sound was easier to grasp and the touring band featured no less than two tall, blonde Teutonic Goddesses with Linda Spa (sax, flute, keys) and Iris Camaa (percussion, vocals). These two remained as regular live musicians until Edgar's death.
A couple of discs to avoid would be the insipid 'Rockoon' and the Enigma-styled 'Goblin's Club' both of which aimed for the mainstream but didn't really deliver. And Jerome did several dance-remix collections to try to give TD some youth-appeal.
Worth checking out, though, is the high-octane blast of 'Arizona Live 1992'
Tangerine Dream 2004 Arizona Live Full Album
The group were also a hard-working supplier of soundtrack music for, mostly documentary, films and vast quantities of material were recorded and released. There is, later on, a return to a more ambient space-rock sound with 'Mars Polaris' (also released as 'Mars Mission Counter' with the same tracks in a different order !?) This music was performed live and actually sounds better when done on stage on the CD 'Rocking Mars'.
Tangerine Dream 2005 Rocking Mars Full Album
But Jerome's time was coming to a close, Edgar was pushing audibly to bring TD back into a more exploratory ambient area and brought in Thorsten Quaeschning to help with the album 'Jeanne D'Arc' where a different musical direction surfaces, a trip back to previous glories.
Tangerine Dream 2005 Jeanne D'Arc Full Album
Edgar had hoped that TD would push forward as a 3-piece team, but Jerome wasn't happy and decided, after 16 years, to leave the group and pursue a solo career.
And so Edgar, now backed by the sympathetic support of Thorsten Q, continued on into a new phase in the ever-developing musical universe that he had created.