GOBLINS' CLUB

Those TD fans from the 70s who purchased this album in 1996 on the back of widespread publicity (for their first release on the Castle label) received an almighty surprise. And not a pleasant one either.

'Goblin's Club' is nothing like early TANGERINE DREAM, of course. Nor is this album much like the dreadful soundtrack stuff they squandered their talents on in the mid-80s to mid-90s. It is, in fact, pure prog rock. Just not very good prog rock.

Apart from the first track, that is. 'Towards the Evening Star' is the sort of catchy number that makes you think perhaps EDGAR FROESE has recaptured his mojo. Lovely stuff. However, the rest of the album is, without exception, sterile. The coldness that worked so well for TANGERINE DREAM when delivering their 'Berlin School' material simply renders this stuff irrelevant. Why spend money on formulaic, over-elaborate mechanistic compositions when there are thousands of albums out there that could change your life? This won't.

Terrifyingly, TD gets on the world music bandwagon years after it left town and samples ANOU D'MERIAN's voice. Even ENIGMA did the eastern voice theft thing better than this. The list of guest artists do their best to paper over the compositional cracks, but even gorgeous sound and excellent performances do not mask the emptiness here. The drums are nice, the guitar very nice, the synths beautiful. All the more reason to deplore the substandard material they were working with.

And most frightening of all, this is better than virtually all the other TD albums of the last twenty years.