QUICHOTTE

Unjustly overlooked Tangerine Dream live recording that captures them almost at their peak.Johannes Schmoelling had just joined Froese and Franke and here gives their music a real shot in the arm.Within electronic music this trio has never been bettered IMO.

Stylistically this is similar to their other release in the same year Tangram.The first part opens with an extended electric piano section that is like Tangram Part One.Here they develop it a bit more.The second part is more electronic driven but also features some nifty guitar work that takes it all up another level.Great stuff and ideal for the headphones.Safe 4 star album that as far as live Tangerine albums go is only slightly behind Ricochet and Poland but on a par with the excellent Logos and Encore.One to add to your collection without doubt.

TANGERINE DREAM were masters of the live performance. Their spacey beats and synths allowed them to indulge in a considerable amount of live jamming, with guitars, flutes, synths and whatever took their fancy used to overlay that persistent sequenced rhythm.

This meant that no two classic TD performances were ever quite the same. This can be witnessed from the hundreds of bootlegs available - and by listening to this album. For 'Quichotte' - or 'Pergamon', as it was retitled in 1986 to catch the unwary - is in major part 'Tangram' live. The main themes are instantly recognisable as such. I imagine that this leaves TANG fans with mixed emotions on tracking down a copy of this rare recording.

'Tangram' was retrogressive to my mind, and 'Quichotte' does nothing to change my view. Skilled surgeons have operated on this music to remove any hint of drama or avant-garde-ness, leaving a bland pap that is so much less than the full TANGERINE DREAM experience. Despite there being nothing to object to - it all sounds fine - I cannot recommend this album to anyone but the collector or fan. Not even a superb FROESE guitar solo that takes up most of Side 2 can save this one.

If you want to find out what TANGERINE DREAM were like live, look elsewhere.

To make the experience longer, I tend to listen to this album after ''Tangram''. They are of course quite similar in essence and since I fell ''progfundly'' in love with ''Tangram'', I could only be pleased with ''Quichotte''. As usual, the band is improvising an awful lot, even if there are some cues.

This is of course a more confidential album than previous live releases and much praised albums such as ''Ricochet''. Still, it is full of elements from the true TD essence of the seventies (which we all admire and love, right?) and as such it can be consider as a pretty good work.

Both sides of this album have their charms. While the first one is more ambient, full of tact and beauty, the other one is strongly harder thanks to some great guitar work and the rhythm is more upbeat as well. The whole though is an enjoyable experience for any symphonic- electronic freak. As I am.

This is an album that shouldn't disappoint any TD lovers from their great ''Virgin'' era... It is somewhat relegated in the second-territories which is not really accurate. I quite like it and my rating is four stars.

Pergamon - AKA Quichotte if you get the rare East German original release of the album - finds Tangerine Dream in a groundbreaking concert in East Berlin, in a rare instance of cultural exchange between West and East Germany during the Cold War. Blending classical styles which would be more familiar to an East German audience (who'd been largely kept insulated from rock music by the authorities) with more adventurous music existing somewhere between the arcane, progressive space realms they'd explored in the 1970s and the slick cyberspace terrain they'd enter in the 1980s, it's an enjoyable piece which is one of the better Tangerine Dream live albums out there.