indieOpolis

This is the first in a series of personal reviews of Tangerine Dream related material.

Electronic Meditation

Release Year: 1970

TD Time Period: The Pink Years

Personal Background

When I first came acquired my copy of this LP back in oh…around 1985, my parents nor my family really knew what to think of me .  Sure, they gathered I was not the typical teenage boy who either listened primarily to Heavy Metal, Rock, Pop, etc, but they didn’t know what to make of the “noise” (as they called it) coming out of my room .

They would make comments such as “That’s just a bunch of nonsensical noise!”, but I knew better. 

I would say to myself “This means something, this is important!”  (Ok, so I stole that line from Close Encounters of the Third Kind, but hey…it’s what I was thinking)

Let them say what they wanted….I was hooked .

Now it wasn’t your general cruise in the car kinda music (although I did do that…….down long dark roads…to enhance the experience ), but I found it to be quite enjoyable myself.  Call me weird…I don’t care.

I won’t go into the details on the background on this release, but leave it to you to check out the Electronic Meditation details at Voices in the Net for that.

This was one of the first times I’ve sat down to listen to this release in many, many years since it wasn’t until recently that I re-acquired it on CD after not having a turntable for long time.

The Review

This was one of the first times I’ve sat down to listen to this release in many, many years since it wasn’t until recently that I re-acquired it on CD after not having a turntable for long time.  Amazingly, I find that I still really enjoy this CD.

I don’t think I would recommend this though as an introductory to the whole Tangerine Dream phenomena, as I don’t believe it truly expresses what captivates so many Tadreamers out there, except for the pure experimental bliss of it.  If you’re going to be a fan, you definitely do have to experience this introductory CD to a band that has survived now for nearly 40 years and continues to make music, stretch and explore

Genesis

This track begins with an ominous series of chords with random pops, sinister faux ghostly howls, and guitar slides that lead to some real jazzy flute riffs and percussion towards the second half of the song.  Totally experimental, yet finalizing in a structured pattern of percussion and flute riffs as it heads to sudden and climatic change into the next track.

Journey Through a Burning Brain

Various guitar slides and plucks bring us along for a Journey Through a Burning Brain.  A low deep background hum brings us into a series of structured chords played via organ which provide the background and more experimental sounds on top.  Eventually the organ takes over to provide a majestic introduction to the next section of the song where once again, flute, percussion and more structure are introduced culminating into the main theme of the song.  Flute and guitar riffs are once again embellished on top of the hard pounding drums, and we rise to yet another climatic change and then back to the majestic organ chords as we fade out.

Cold Smoke

Drastically different than it’s predecessors, this time a softer gentler introduction, yet you are shocked by a quick but rapid burst of instruments, then soft and again, a shocking thunderbolt of instruments.  We then begin down an series of experimental sounds…altered guitar sounds, pops.  Finally we move into a structured rhythm and organ chords riffs, with constant experimental electronic sounds spread throughout.  One unknowing of the intent of the album may be concerned that they are having technical difficulties or shorts in the wiring system of their speaker, or interference, but just know…this is intentional .  We then begin to hear Edgar Froese move into some really cool guitar riffs panning from left to right reminiscent of the 60’s style of psychedelic rock and roll, suddenly ending with heavy breathing.

Ashes to Ashes

More of the experimental electronic sounds as in Cold Smoke lead us into Ashes to Ashes, but this time we immediately begin with a structured bass line, rhythm, enhanced by more guitar riffs.  Still a total experimental psychedelic jam session, but with primarily structure throughout except for the flute riffs.

Resurrection

This track ends with a majestic series of organ chords, with reversed dialog overlaying on the first half of the track.  I remember playing this backwards on my turntable to try to figure out what was being said .  Voices in the Net notes that the words are probably taken from a British custom’s visa document, and wikipedia notes that it is Edgar Froese reading from the back of a ferry ticket from Dover to Calais. It suddenly fades and we begin an almost clone of Genesis.  (It may in fact be the exact first 2 minutes from Genesis as far as I can tell)

In Conclusion

Some may not enjoy this release as much as I do, but as I noted before, Call me weird…..I don’t care.  Not only was this one of the first TD releases I heard, it was also my introduction into the realm of experimental music, and I honestly enjoy it.

Keith Richie

November 21, 2006

Voices in the Net

Electronic Meditation details at Voices in the Net

Electronic Meditation details at Wikipedia

The Tangerine Dream Collection Project at indieOpolis

The first time I can say “Officially” that I became aware of Tangerine Dream was with the soundtrack for Firestarter.  After that, I tried to accumulate as many TD related material as I could get my hands on.  Mind you, I was 14 at the time, therefore money was not something I had a great deal of , yet every time I would find something new, I would snatch it up.

The idea for doing a release by release review came when I started preparing to invest back into fulfilling a life long goal of acquiring the full official TD collection, and keeping up with it  

As for the personal reviews, there are many others who have done the same thing, but this is my review Not someone elses . 

It should be no surprise that Tangerine Dream was THE biggest influence on my own music.

I can’t promise that I’ll be able to finish the collection project nor the individual reviews, but I invite you to come along for the ride!

Keith Richie

November 21, 2006

Voices in the Net

Electronic Meditation details at Voices in the Net

The Tangerine Dream Collection Project at indieOpolis

Quick note before I begin.  I’m changing the title of this series from the form of “The Tangerine Dream Collection Project: Part X…” to “TDCP: Part X…” to help a bit with title/subject consolidation.

Lotsa work later

Okie doke, so as noted in my previous post here, I just spent an enormous amount of time re-engineering and designing the new indieOpolis site and The Tangerine Dream Collection Project site in general.

Most of the time was spent designing the Tangerine Dream Release Inspector and the back-end items to support it.   It’s all setup and ready to go now.  I’m pretty excited about it .  I also added an RSS summary web part for this series as well as a summary web part to the tadream discussions Yahoo! group.

During all of this work, I realized that this project is probably going to take me much longer than I anticipated, and I’ve changed my direction on what my end goal is just a tad bit.

Initially, I decided that I was just going to get the main official primary studio releases filled.  But in retrospect, if I’m going to do this right I’ll make it a lifelong goal to collect “nearly everything” official .  Yep, that means finding those rare single vinyl releases, etc.  (No, I will not try to find every unique publishers release for every item, but I will try to find all the unique official releases).  Therefore, I have updated my categorization views on the full release list as follows:

• In My Collection: This is a view of the list of items that are currently in my collection.
  • This view contains just that, the items in my collection But I’ve also recorded which types of media I have (I.e, CD or LP and which specific publisher release of each) and that data is stored in the IMC Details property of each item. For instance, here is the direct link to Electronic Meditation in my list where you can see an example of what I’m talking about.
  • I would recommend using the Tangerine Dream Release Inspector to view all the releases, as it’ provides a pretty snazzy navigation system for each release, details section, and cross reference link to which Time Period the release is from.  Check it out and let me know what you think!
  • It also contains a link Voices In The Net for more detailed information about each release
• Items to acquire next: This list will contain the current list of items I’ll be acquiring first.  
  • What this means, at this time, is that this list is filtered down to only a Album release type (I.e no box or singles at this time), and only Studio in the release category (I.e., no Compilation nor Samplers live or soundtrack).
    • This doesn’t mean that I won’t necessarily order them in sequence (I.e, include a soundtrack or live release within an order), it’s just a way to make it a bit more manageable.  And the number of filter fields I would have to specify in a SharePoint list would be awful.  (Sure the heck wish we supported mutivalue or checks on our contains filter.)
  • When I’m finished with this release, I’ll update it to another selection, perhaps of Release Type: Album/Box and Release Category: Compilation/Set.
  • This seems to be the only way to make this manageable., and will allow me to get caught up on the studio releases which I have not pursued in quite a few years. 
• Items to acquire (All): This is based on the semi-official release list from Voices In The Net.
  • Voices In The Net is is a non-profit information source for collectors of Tangerine Dream records. It contains an almost complete discography including all official releases of the group from 1970 up to now as far as they are known by the author.
  • This is a just a great resource.  Special thanks to Michael Berling for all his hard work!!!

Over the next week (Since I’m on vacation this week, And I have a long drive ahead of me ), I’ll be listening and providing review details for the “Personal Notes” section on each release.  I’ll also be going back through my collection to fill in the IMC Details for each release.

Patiently awaiting another order

I put in an order for the next batch of CD’s that I didn’t have which consists of the following:

• Rubycon
• Ricochet
• Stratosfear
• Sorcerer (Soundtrack)
• Cyclone
• Force Majeure
• Tangram
• Theif (Soundtrack)
• White Eagle

That’s one shy of 10 like I previously mentioned, but I didn’t want my wife to kill me on spending a big chunk of change on “my little project” in one transaction.

The interesting thing about this order, is that I do already have these in my collection, but as Vinyl, but I keep them under lock and key   Now, I’m not going to get into a debate about vinyl quality over digital 16 bit 44 kHz PCM, so don’t even comment on it.  I want the CD versions of these for more than a couple of reasons:

• My vinyl copies are my fine paintings
• I can’t just rip them easily…well, I could go out and get a replacement turntable, which I will at some point, but that’s no in the plan for right now, and I want the CD’s to easily rip them to my media center.

Note: Back when I was young, and got sucked into TD, I bought a Cassette, Vinyl, and CD version of all the releases.  This was because you can find various bonus tracks etc depending on which publication of the release it is, so I just yanked up anything I could find .

Well, patiently awaiting, and standby for the next post where I start blogging about my personal reviews and memories of each release from the way back time machine

- Keith