BLACKDANCE

I only have listened to two albums by Tangerine Dream:"Cyclone" and one recorded live in the early 80s (maybe called "Dominion"). I have to say that I didn`t like both albums, so I thought that I hardly could like this album recorded by ex-Tangerine Dream member Klaus Schulze.

This L.P. was not played for a long time. It belongs to one of my brothers, and I can`t remember now seeing him playing this record. Maybe he bought it in 1982. I remember that I played it twice then, never to play it again. I tried today again to listen to it, so I played it, remembering very little about it, other than I didn`t like it the first time I listened to it. I didn`t like it again. I`m going to explain the reasons:

The album sounds dated, being recorded in the 70s with the electronic instruments which were then in the fad. It is clearly an experimental album, very experimental maybe. The three musical pieces are monotonous, showing too much time in duration and lacking in creativity, other than to "experiment" with the sounds played on a synthesizer or an organ. Maybe the album was more interesting in the seventies, but now, it doesn`t sound interesting for me.

Now, about the musical pieces:

"Ways of Changes": with an acoustic 12 string guitar, percussion and keyboards, plus "galactic noises" also played in the synthesizer. The 12 string guitar is the most interesting part in this musical piece.

"Some Velvet Phasing": a musical piece played only on keyboards. Really boring, IMO.

"Voices of Syn": the most interesting part in this musical piece is the voice of the singer, Ernst Siemon. With his vocals included, this musical piece promised better things than the previous two, but, when the singer stops to sing his part, the monotony starts again, with Schulze playing sustained chords in an organ while playing scales with the other hand, also synths`(very typical of the seventies) "galactic sounds" and it also has percussion, which appears and disappears. The sustained chords only change their sound using some effects. This lasts until the end of the piece, at almost 23 minutes of duration.

There are some good "sound atmospheres" in this album, but the monotony spoils them. I`m sorry if some fans of Schulze`s music don`t like my review, but, as I said before, I really don`t like Tangerine Dream`s and Schulze`s music. I need more variety in the music to be interested in listening again to albums.

Another good point is the cover design, which I really like, being very "surrealistic" a la Salvador Dalí.

Some things that I imagined while listening to this record were some images of a "modern dance company" dancing to some parts of "Ways of Changes" and "Voices of Syn". I`m not a fan of ballet or "modern avant garde dances", but the music in this album could be right for that kind of dance, maybe.