FORCE MAJEURE

Tangerine Dream

Progressive Electronic

4.03 | 538 ratings

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Rune2000
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Honorary Collaborator

This 1979-release marked Tangerine Dream's return to the direction that was depicted on their 1976 album Stratosfear. With this in mind Force Majeure is still far from the classic style that the band depicted on Phaedra and Rubycon.

The first notable difference is Edgar Froese's extended use of guitar arrangements which give the music a feel of Space Rock that must have been inspired by Pink Floyd's style of the time. This change is very prominent on the opening title track which takes the band's sound to new heights even thought the strong melodic coating might feel a bit too sugary for the fans of the early, more ambient, material. This composition does take a while to get off the ground but towards the 4th minute is where the music gets very spacy, with Klaus Kruger's percussion work only adding more layering to the beauty of this work. The ending section is a complete killer that should knock most fans of their feet the moment they'll hear it.

Cloudburst Flight continues on the same themes as the opening track but this time with even more of that Pink Floyd feel to it. The keyboard soloing towards the end might put some people off, myself included, but other than that it's another fine piece of music from the Tangerine Dream factory. The 15 minute Thru Metamorphic Rock was definitely much more of a surprise, to my ears, since I wasn't expecting this band's music to become so direct so early in their career. I feel that Froese gets a bit carried away with his guitar soloing, especially since there isn't much of momentum to back up his intense playing. The transition to the more electronic section, right after the guitar driven part, feels clumsy and might just as well have been a totally different track. Another suggestion would be to cut out the first 4,5 minutes of this composition and just leave it as a 10 minute electronic jam. Unfortunately even those final 10 minutes aren't that impressive and therefore do more damage than good for the album.

Even though I'm disappointed by one of these three compositions, Force Majeure has enough material to make me believe that this album is a return to form for Tangerine Dream. It might not be the masterpiece that I expected after such promising albums as Rubycon and Ricochet but good enough to make me interested in what this band would do next.

***** star songs: Force Majeure (18:21)

**** star songs: Cloudburst Flight (7:29)

*** star songs: Thru Metamorphic Rocks (14:30)

Rune2000 | 4/5 | 2010-6-30

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