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Tangerine Dream

I've known about Tangerine Dream ever since I was a child. I would see their name featuring as the musical composers for a few movies (sometimes their name would be bigger than that of the director's!) on some of those moldy old VHS tapes at my local video store. Their name never inspired much in me and for a long time, I dismissed them as some sort of cheesy sixties psych-pop band à la Strawberry Alarm Clock or some crappy new age band. Even during my high school years, I'll always remember that my stage/drama teacher mentioned them as being one of his favorite musical artists. That to me sailed the coffin shut for good. There was just no way I could ever get into this. And from the few exclusively electronic later albums that I've heard, I was happy to know that my preconceptions were confirmed. Heck, we used to sell their records in the New Age department back in the days when I worked in a huge music store in downtown Montreal (although we also sold Ash Ra Tempel albums in the same section, so go figure). They basically became a big "no no" in my book.

Flash-forward about ten or so years. I'm knee deep into the whole german krautrock scene, going bonkers over Amon Düül II and coo coo for Neu!. All of a sudden, I am once again confronted with the name. Shit! They even featured on the infamous Nurse With Wound list! I must have missed something somewhere. Thank God for a few good tips by a clerk in a small (and now unfortunately closed) music store I used to hang out in, I was able to hear Tangerine Dream's first few albums and FUCK!!! OK!!! Now I get it! This music hit me like a ton of bricks. It's definitely waaaay out there, completely fried and totally insane. It's no wonder the fans of the band's later, electronic period are constantly rejecting these early "formative" albums - it's not even close to sounding alike. It's as if we were listening to a whole new other band here.

What first got me to want to hear these early albums is the involvement of legendary electro-composer Klaus Schulze's (who also underwent a similar drastic change in his sound with time) involvement with Tangerine Dream's first album (along with Conrad Schnitzler nonetheless)! I hunted down everything I could find from this early period and I determined that to me, Tangerine Dream's major sound shift occurred after the release of Rubycon, which I consider to be their last truly amazing album. The rest sounds like fluff. I used to own the Sanctuary Records remasters, but unfortunately sold them when came time to move to Sweden. I'm having a hard time getting them back today and I sorely regret having abandoned them. Now if only we could get a decent remaster of Phaedra and Rubycon, I'd be set.

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