Which album personify their band?

Swinton MCR wrote: Genesis - Selling England by the Pound Yes - Tales from Topographic Oceans Camel - Moonmadness Greenslade - Bedside manners are extra ELP - Tarkus Floyd - Wish you were here IQ - Subterranea Tangerine Dream - Force Majeure Marillion - Misplaced childhood Twelfth Night - Live at the Target The Enid - Aerie faerie Nonsense Dream Theatre - Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence Spocks Beard - Beware of Darkness

I have to take issue with your inclusion of "Force Majeure",Swinton. FM is a one off album by TD,it stands alone in the TD canon,it has it's roots in the previous albums they had made by then (1979) and some tentative feelers towards the future,but it really sounds like little else they have ever done. For one thing it has drums,something which had only appeared on one previous TD album ("Cyclone") and wasn't to resurface until many years later and then in more eclectic percussion varieties than the very straightforward standard drumkit that Klaus Krieger plays on FM. And he does play a rather annoying disco type hi hat which was all the rage then which dates the album considerably and Edgar Froese's guitar is featured rather prominently which hadn't been that often in TD's history until then and was entirely absent on most of the classic 80's albums with the Froese/Franke/Schmoelling line up so I don't think FM is the quintessential TD album or the one that personifies them. The problem with TD of course is that they have had such a long career with so many different phases and these phases are sometimes wildly different from each other,sometimes so much so that you can't even believe that it's TD you're listening to. That makes it very difficult to pick just one album that truly sums them up.

No disputation from me on the merits of "Force Majeur" as a very good album in it's own right (except for those annoying drums,maybe!) and now that I have had time to think about it some more,it might serve just as well as any other of their albums as a sort of summing up TD album since their musical canvas is broader than most bands and so they're much more difficult to pin down and define. I have more than 60 TD albums ranging from the very experimental to the most radiofriendly and I find it impossible to choose just one that personifies them but since FM was made smack in the middle of what many think of as TD's classic period (74 to 84) it might serve as the best personification TD album we're likely to find in their vast production.

philippe wrote:  "I don't think FM is the quintessential TD album or the one that personifies them" Simply true!!! It depends also about the periods of creativity. From the Virgin / classic years the album that defines to the best TD's music is probably "Stratosfear" About the quintessential TD album, without any doubts I would like to say "ZEIT"

"Zeit" is certainly spectacular,and I would also say it's a quintessential TD album,but it's not really representative is it? They only did that type of music for a few years in the very early 70's,already by 73 that phase of their history was,well,history. For the most part of their 34 years as a recording band they have done very little that resembles "Zeit" so I don't think it can personify them since it represents what they sounded like at a very brief moment of their long career. It's impossible to choose just one album which personifies them,but one from each period or phase could be a more feasible project. I have to mull that over and see what I come up with.

Syzygy wrote: I've been giving this some thought myself, and I've come to agree with Swinton; Force Majeure DOES personify Tangerine Dream. I would previously have opted for Rubycon, probably because that was my first TD purchase, but actually it's not that representative of the band's output as a whole. Force Majeure is like a patchwork quilt that has elements of more or less everything TD did up to 1984 (with the possible exception of Zeit, although you could say the inclusion of cello is a brief nod to that immense classic). Plus, of course, it's a superb album in its own right.

On closer reflection,I agree about "Force Majeur". It does have bits of everything TD had been up to then and were to become in the early 80's and despite the drums which I absolutely HATE I would probably recommend that album as a starter for people who were TD novices.