ZEIT

Before I start, I should say it's extremely rare for me to give such a minimal album a 5-star rating, but this really deserves it! Very narrowly gets one, but the only electronic album I've given a 5-star review to.

Right, where to start reviewing "Zeit"? All 74 minutes consist of improvisation, very few melodies, no lyrics, and no concept of time whatsoever (in a way), and I'm guessing lots of people have gone on about the 7-minute cello intro to "Birth Of Liquid Plejades"? Therefore, I'll try to avoid going through each little sequence of notes, because you really have to experience such an almost otherworldly album to get to grips with it.

Definitely a very risky release and entirely pushing the boundaries of music, let along progressive rock. Although many of the themes on here are "kosmische" and distant, somehow it feels like a very personal album. Again, this may be because of the empathy of Tangerine Dream taking such a risk with it. The effects that the musicians use are just blissful, and there is such a magnificent atmosphere and tension throughout. Always something going on. Also, I'd like to give a hat-tip to Edgar Froese. His "glissando guitar" adds a greatly underestimated quality to "Zeit", and this album cover (painted by himself) is so hypnotic and broad. Feels larger than any other artworks in my collection, because of that bloated black circle centring the solar eclipse in the middle.

The album really requires many listens, and you need a lot of time to really be able to indulge yourself in it without being interrupted (not completed achieved by myself yet!). Unlike albums such as "Ommadawn" and "Agaetis Byrjun", you really have to get INTO the mood during your listen, unlike just being in the right mood to begin with, in my opinion. All sounds quite pretentious but this is an album of 4 self-indulgent 20-minute epics. One of the reasons I love it really. The titles of the music have been very well selected in my opinion, especially "Nebulous Dawn" and the title track. You can really get to experience the music more, and with each title making you think and investigate these extracts from "Largo", the album can be interpreted in so many different ways, almost completely different from the last time you heard it in some cases.

This album is an absolute favourite of mine, and my preferred Tangerine Dream album (the only one I have purchased up until now). The great Piero Scaruffi proclaimed this to be simply "their masterpiece and one of the most important albums of the time, a four-movement symphony which adopted a more electronic format and a looser concept of rhythm." summing it up excellently.

The last thing I'd like to say is that you shouldn't be at all put off by these many negative reviews and the length of "Zeit". Whilst this album does have a lot of lowly rated reviews compared to other electronic classics, look at some of the positive ones! Just as lots of 60s/psychedelic fans cannot comprehend "Trout Mask Replica", or how prog rock fans (like myself) struggle to look past the musical basics and understand the emotion behind indie albums like "In The Aeroplane Over The Sea", "Zeit" falls into the same unfortunate trap...

A: Definitely a masterpiece, still way ahead of its time. If any of you listen to this for the first time and there is just some appeal to you, buy it! You won't regret it!

Birth Of Liquid Plejades: ***** Nebulous Dawn: **** Origin Of Supernatural Probabilities: **** Zeit: *****