TYGER

'Tyger' (the song) could have been the first thing I heard by Tangerine Dream, from radio in my teens. For liking that song I wanted to have TD on vinyl and I ordered blindly The Collection 2LP including the early space/avant-garde stuff, for which I definitely wasn't prepared (until a decade later, to some extent)! 'Tyger' is something like a New Age ballad, very emotional female vocals, bright keyboard background and relatively traditional song form, ie. chorus gets repeated few times. That it's also a famous poem - a very beautiful and accessible one, by the mystic visionaire William Blake - gave it some extra value. But of course it is NOT a typical Tangerine Dream track at all. And this album in total is a "different" one as it has vocals. I like Jocelyn B. Smith's voice and also musically I consider this one of the best TD's from the 80's onwards.

The other track of Side One is 'London' built around several poems of Blake. It is overlong and seems to wander aimlessly, even repetitiously, despite some stronger moments in it. But Side Two is completely a pleasure to listen. 'Alchemy of the Heart' is a long instrumental mainly in two sections, the first building a dramatic emotional tension and the second calming down to very soft and romantic layers of keyboards. 'The Smile' is a clean, ethereal song like the title track. Probably even better. Its airy keyboard sound evoked images of either a solitary big city night or the frosty landscapes of Iceland when I talked about it with a friend. Yeah, each can have inner images of his/her own with this fine album. If you like Vangelis (and the idea of female vocals added to that style) you probably like this one, even if TD as a whole is not your favourites.

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