TYGER

It's a nice album but it's not Tangerine Dream. Nobody pretends the spacey soundscapes and the journeys through the galaxy offered by the band during the Pink period now that we are in the middle of the 80s, but even not being one of the many soundtracks released during that decade it's so far from the original TD music that I can hardly believe to be listening to them.

It's not only for the vocals thing. It's not the first time that we have vocals in a TD album.....well, it's just the second...however Jocelyn Smith sounds like any of the 80s female pop-singers like let's say, Bananarama or similars and the keyboards layouts are very deeply in the actual pop standards. One of the worst things in the 80s was the race to the standardisation of the sounds: artists who wanted to sound "modern" had to use fairlights and drone drumming, so also bands like TD who was using that kind of sounds since from the 70s appear standardised and to be honest don't do anything to appear original in this album.

Add to this that William Blake is a poet that I don't like much. "Little lamb who made thee" is in my poor opinion a bad example of poetry, but I'm not an expert in literature, so forget this comment.

"Tyger" starts with a very radio friendly pop song. Nicer than most of the pop songs of the period but too similar to what Bonnie Tyler was used to sing. "London" raises the hopes of something more progressive, specially for its duration, and effectively is light years more interesting than the title track. Jocelyn's speech sounds very Krautrock and makes me think to the speech on the B side of Klaus Schulze's "Dune". Unfortunately she sings. Not that she has a bad voice, but her style is too similar to Grace Jones and it doesn't fit well with TD music. The instrumental part is not bad, specially when the rhythm stops for a while and the keyboard soudscape reminds to the late 70s.

"Alchemy Of The Heart" is a title that doesn't inspire much.The track starts with drone drumming followed by a piano quite similar to Oldfield's Tubular Bells intro, but it progresses in a TD style. The 80s typical sounds are not too disturbing. It's surely better than its contemporary "Seen One Earth" of my beloved Peter Bardens. There's a sudden change after 3:30 minutes. It looks like Froese has found back some of the old inspiration. The melody has a classical influence also thanks to the harpsichord sound. A stop at minute 6 and we are in a dreamy world, just a bit too melodic for my tastes. And again Peter Bardens comes to my mind. It's the kind of music that he was producing in the same period and with almost the same sounds. Try to survive to the first two tracks because this one shouldn't be missed even if it's not a masterpiece.

"Smile" starts promising with a typical repetitive keyboard base but the vocals are worse than on the other tracks even with a theme that wouldn't be too bad. Nothing more to say about it.

The most intriguing track title for the closer (two tracks on the vinyl) "21st Century Common Man" has a clear reference, but only on the title. There's nothing of the KC masterpiece in this track. I've never been in a disco for more than 15 minutes but for what I remember of tha period I think that the first two minutes of this track could have been danced. Not totally bad even this one but nothing special.

One good track, three average and one bad means an average rating: good but non essential but I'm a bit generous this time.