Sundaze 1144

Hello, Occupy rallies are starting to irritate the thugs in uniform who feel their authority is challenged, these nincompoops don't even realise they are being screwed in the same way the 99% is. Their preferred choice is putting the boot in. It's the identifying with authority that gets their little dicks hard. Isn't it ironic that the first victim was an Irak veteran marine? In times ahead the US army may yet come to play a decisive role, there's an overwhelming support there for presidential candidate Ron Paul as well, Ron who ? Indeed the one that's been kept out by the media as their masters fear him, as he has real grassroots support and really wants to slash the federal government.

Today's artists belong to the founding fathers of ambient music, in many ways, they were there first, Tangerine Dream. After a few years developing Kraut/Cosmic rock by 74 their skills and technology astonished the world when they released Phaedra, which 37 years and an explosion in computer technology later still stands as a masterpiece in aural art. In the eighties they concentrated on filmmusic which greatly expanded their fanbase, it's on these era i will concentrate for this and next weeks post.

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Edgar Froese, born in Tilsit, East Prussia, in 1944, was little influenced by music while growing up. Instead, he looked to the Dadaist and Surrealist art movements for inspiration, as well as literary figures such as Gertrude Stein, Henry Miller, and Walt Whitman. He organized multimedia events at the residence of Salvador Dali in Spain during the mid-'60s and began to entertain the notion of combining his artistic and literary influences with music; Froese played in a musical combo called the Ones, which recorded just one single before dissolving in 1967. The first lineup of Tangerine Dream formed later that year, with Froese on guitar, bassist Kurt Herkenberg, drummer Lanse Hapshash, flutist Volker Hombach and vocalist Charlie Prince. The quintet aligned itself with contemporary American acid rock (the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane), and played around Berlin at various student events. The lineup lasted only two years, and by 1969 Froese had recruited wind player Conrad Schnitzler and drummer Klaus Schulze. One of the trio's early rehearsals, not originally intended for release, became the first Tangerine Dream LP when Germany's Ohr Records issued Electronic Meditation in June 1970. The LP was a playground for obtuse music-making -- keyboards, several standard instruments, and a variety of household objects were recorded and filtered through several effects processors, creating a sparse, experimentalist atmosphere.

Both Schulze and Schnitzler left for solo careers later in 1970, and Froese replaced them the following year with drummer Christopher Franke and organist Steve Schroeder. When Schroeder left a year later, Tangerine Dream gained its most stable lineup core when organist Peter Baumann joined the fold. The trio of Froese, Franke, and Baumann would continue until Baumann's departure in 1977, and even then, Froese and Franke would compose the spine of the group for an additional decade.

On 1971's Alpha Centauri and the following year's Zeit, the trio's increased use of synthesizers and a growing affinity for space music resulted in albums that pushed the margin for the style. Atem, released in 1973, finally gained Tangerine Dream widespread attention outside Europe; influential British DJ John Peel named it his LP of the year, and the group signed a five-year contract with Richard Branson's Virgin Records. Though less than a year old, Virgin had already become a major player in the recording industry, thanks to the massive success of Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells

Tangerine Dream's first album for Virgin, Phaedra, was an milestone not only for the group, but for instrumental music. Branson had allowed the group free rein at Virgin's Manor Studios, where they used Moog synthesizers and sequencers for the first time; the result was a relentless, trance-inducing barrage of rhythm and sound, an electronic update of the late-'60s and early-'70s classical minimalism embodied by Terry Riley. Though mainstream critics were unsurprisingly hostile toward the album (it obviously made no pretense to rock & roll in any form), Phaedra broke into the British Top 20 and earned Tangerine Dream a large global audience.

The follow-ups Rubycon and the live Ricochet were also based on the blueprint with which Phaedra had been built, but the release of Stratosfear in 1976 saw the use of more organic instruments such as untreated piano and guitar; also, the group added vocals for 1978's Cyclone, a move that provoked much criticism from their fans. Both of these innovations didn't change the sound in a marked degree, however; their incorporation into rigid sequencer patterns continued to distance Tangerine Dream from the mainstream of contemporary instrumental music.

more next week

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As if the sound is breaking through your speakers, Alpha Centauri begins its journey. Crackling and swirling synthesizers seize control of your stereo. Like a call to psychedelic arms, the first track "Sunrise in the Third System" marches on with its organ. The music on this album is quite different from Tangerine Dream’s first album Electronic Meditation, because of a heavier reliance on keyboards and electronic technology, although they still mostly remain in the background: the dominant instruments on the album are organ and flute. The shift in instrumentation still resulted in an atmosphere dubbed by Edgar Froese himself as Kosmische musik. This album sold 20,000 copies in their native Germany, nearly four times as many as their later classic Phaedra

Tangerine Dream – Alpha Centauri (flac 201mb)

01 Sunrise In The Third System 4:21
02 Fly And Collision Of Comas Sola 13:23
03 Alpha Centauri 22:08

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This is the first Tangerine Dream album to feature their now classic sequencer-driven sound, which kicked off the whole Berlin School genre. This album marked the beginning of the group's international success and was their first album released on the British Virgin records label. It achieved a six-figure sale in the UK, reaching No.15 in the charts in a 15-week run, with virtually no air play, only by strong word-of-mouth. It also earned the group a gold disc in Australia.

Phaedra is one of the most important, artistic, and exciting works in the history of electronic music, a brilliant and compelling summation of Tangerine Dream's early avant-space direction balanced with the synthesizer/sequencer technology just beginning to gain a foothold in nonacademic circles. The result is best heard on the 15-minute title track, unparalleled before or since for its depth of sound and vision. Given focus by the arpeggiated trance that drifts in and out of the mix, the track progresses through several passages including a few surprisingly melodic keyboard lines and an assortment of eerie Moog and Mellotron effects, gaseous explosions, and windy sirens. Despite the impending chaos, the track sounds more like a carefully composed classical work than an unrestrained piece of noise. Perhaps even more powerful as a musical landmark now than when it was first recorded, Phaedra has proven the test of time, one of those 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.

Tangerine Dream – Phaedra (flac 154mb)

01 Phaedra 17:45
02 Mysterious Semblance At The Strand Of Nightmares 9:55
03 Movements Of A Visionary 8:01
04 Sequent C' 2:18

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Ricochet is the first live album by German electronic music group Tangerine Dream. The album was released in 1975. It consists of two long compositions mixed from taped recordings of the England and France portions of their fall 1975 European Tour. The sound of the album is similar to the group's other "Virgin Years" releases, relying heavily on synthesizers and sequencers to produce a dense ambient soundscape. Ricochet utilizes more percussion and electronic guitar than its predecessors Phaedra and Rubycon, bordering on electronic rock. The principal innovation on the album is its use of complex multi-layered rhythms, foreshadowing not only the band's own direction in the 80s, but also trance music and similar genres of electronic dance music.

After the Top 20 placings for Phaedra and Rubycon, Ricochet fared less well in sales terms, spending just four weeks on the UK album chart, reaching number 40. In recent years however, Ricochet has outdone all other Baumann-era albums in popularity and become the third most popular Tangerine Dream album overall.

Tangerine Dream – Ricochet (flac 213mb)

01 Ricochet Part 1 16:59
02 Ricochet Part 2 21:05

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