THE VIRGIN YEARS 1974-1978

This 3 CD set is a reasonably priced overview of what was arguably Tangerine Dream's best line up during their Virgin years. Phaedra, Rubycon, Ricochet and Stratosfear are all included in their entirety, which is as good a run of Berlin school albums as you could wish for. If you're not familiar with this era of Tangerine Dream, your ears are in for a treat.

There are, however, two downsides to this collection. The more irritating of them is the bizarre decision to skip the excellent 1976 live album Encore, which was the last Franke/Froese/Baumann release on Virgin, and to include instead the very uneven Cyclone from 1978. The other issue is the inclusion of assorted radio edits and adverts that don't really add anything and rather disrupt the flow. It would have been nice to have the Sorcerer soundtrack included, but as that was on a different label there were probably licensing issues.

If you see a cheap copy and you haven't got the original albums this is a pretty good way to acquire some prime 1970s Tangerine Dream, but it could have been so much better.