TYGER

I think the Tangerine Dream era in which Edgar Froese and Chris Franke were joined by Paul Haslinger (who replaced Johannes Schmoelling) is quite enjoyable. Haslinger came from the classical background and brought some compositional tightness to the group. This trio debuted with the pretty cool, ocean-themed album Underwater Sunlight (1986). The next year they released a very atypical TD album which featured female vocals to sing selected pieces of poetry by the legendary visionary William Blake. The title track 'Tyger' was of course based on the best known Blake poem that glorifies the "fearful symmetry" of the feline in question.

'Tyger' was probably the first TD tune I ever heard, at least knowingly. I heard it from the radio at the age of 17 and I was impressed by the song and its mystic atmosphere. A bit later I stumbled upon TD's early Krautrock stuff and was somewhat confused, but that was only the beginning of my relationship with the German electronic music legend. The double-leayered vocals of Jocelyn B. Smith and the crystalline synth backing wasn't quite anything I had heard before. Admittedly, from today's perspective, the playing itself is rather monotonous and stiff on the Tangerine Dream scale, not to mention the song structure which relies heavily on the chorus repetition.

The Tyger album originally didn't feature the two-part instrumental '21st Century Common Man'; the latter part is on this single. This piece is almost funky as the rhythm pattern is very central. In fact one could think there was a full jazz- rock/ fusion combo instead of a synth-based trio. Jan Hammer did similar catchy synth music for Miami Vice, but TD seem to have more sonic muscle here.

This is TD as its most commercial and accessible, but not bad at all, although very atypical.