CYCLONE

What's wrong here? I have probably the advantage to have discovered this album many years after its release, so I didn't have the bad reactions that the fans seem to have given it. Vocals are unusual for TD and the very melodic first 5 minutes of "Bent Cold Sideway" are far from what one can expect from a Tangerine Dream's album of the 70s, but can anybody say that they are bad? And what about the following five minutes with the usual electronic base but with the addition of fantastic flute, bass flute and clarinet? The whispered voice adds a touch of psychedelia...This is a great song, no doubts.

I can imagine the fans thinkig to a band "going commercial", felling betrayed by a band that's no longer experimental (even if the rule of the 5 minutes is still applied), but I don't see anything wrong in this song.

"Rising Runner Missed By Endless Sender" sounds like an anticipation of the 80s. It could be Kraftwerk or a British new-wave band, two things still to come at the time of the release. Even if going commercial, this band was still in advance with the times. Five minutes (again five) of dark electronic in a pure 80's style.

The side B contains "Madrigal Meridian". A side-long track that starts back from the spacey ambients of the beginnings even if there are more changes respect to things like Birth of Liquid Pleiades. The electronic bass base takes only three minutes to start, instead of five. Sign that something is effectively changing. The guitar which enters at minute 5:30 is quite floydian even if just for a while. This track belongs to the period of Phaedra and Ricochet and even if the fans may have thought that this album was commercial I don't think this can be defined an easy- listening. There's a remarkable keyboard at minute 10 quickly replaced by the guitar for one of the hardest moment of this band in terms of rock. I think TD weren't so rock since from Electronic Meditation.

Well, I like this album and because I don't care about its being commercial more than 30 years ago, I rate it with the 4 stars that I think it deserves.