Best TD album of the 70s!

 

 

The line-up with Johannes Schmoelling is my favorite, too. FFS has many fans.

I know Cyclone was disliked for the use of vocals, but I like it a lot. 

The sound they managed to cook up on Stratosfear though is perhaps one of the most replicated in all of PE - surely up through the 80s and 90s. For that alone it earns a lot of respect from me.

 

When you go back, one of these days, and listen to Terry Riley, W Carlos and Beaver and Krause ... the three (probably) biggest names in the medium at the time ... and then come back and listen to this album by Tangerine Dream ... conversation is over!

 

A lot of electronic music was mechanical and not emotional. I always li Terry and W and B&K, but the experience in listening is different ... it felt clinical on the others ... it didn't feel clinical with TD at all! it was extremely movie like for my mind!

I haven't heard anything as complex as the title track.  It sounds like something Tomita would have done,

doing a version of a song by a classical master.  Usually, early Synergy is more advanced compositionally I think then TD.   I don't know their body of work as well as I should, I am almost always amazed by much of it.  Hopefully, the music they did after the 1970's will be rewarding, but that is pretty much all I know of them that I've come back to.  Looking forward to hearing more ASAP. 

 

Side A, "Mojave Plan" (20:05). Enjoy! (Side B is here, too, but "Mojave Plan" is superior.)

 

 

 

The title track however is an instantly recognisable stand-out landmark piece of Prog Rock. I know that Froese isn't rated as much of a guitarist but I like the subtle use of 12-string and the clichéd Fender - the music didn't need a great guitarist thou' on later live versions the guitar is even more prominent and it shows that when the mood takes them the Tango's can rock. 

 

Backstage, talking to Edgar Froese and being filmed by a young Jerome, I commented on how good the show was.  He said, "I hope no one noticed we had been tippling the vodka."

 

A wonderful album, but I would not want to be without ATEM, ZEIT and PHAEDRA in that order.

Happy New Year everyone.

Oh bu77er. I wish I'd seen that. I lived 5 miles up the road at that point. ;-)

Perhaps we know each other from UMIST rock night days ? ;-)

 

110% agreed! And this time you don't have to scare me with Mysterious Semblance ... can't believe that it took me that many days to warm up to that stuff!

 

Nowadays, I tend to think that what was originally, an "ambient" sounding thing that was exploring the instruments, ran into a "concept", or "idea" that was illustrated better in ZEIT, and then out of this world in PHAEDRA!

 

For me, Stratosfear, is about the new instruments (as Dean suggests) and their new ability, or the music in it would have more in common with PHAEDRA/RUBYCON, than it would with the new style. However, for radio listening content, and Guy's example, STRATOSFEAR is much more suited to be played on prime time, than the previous albums, and ... he did play it ... hundreds of times! ...

 

(... you with the balloons ... next!!!! All on a very nice and special Christmas show and TD upcoming with Ash Ra Tempel on deck! And many other shows!)

I too agree except I love my Alpha Centauri/Atem-double vinyl and spin the A&B sides more often than C&D. I guess Stratosfear is not a personal favorite but I still dig every second of it.

 

Guitar became more of a lead instrument in the music of Tangerine Dream beginning with Stratosfear. I personally believe several electronic bands were influenced by Edgar's guitar idea. The way that the band composed their electronic music on Stratosfear was more relative to Prog than pulsating electronics established within the electronic music world. The reason for this existed in the guitar lines. For example , Ash Ra Temple and Amon Duul II experimented with the guitar quite in the same fashion as the early Pink Floyd. You can even spot that particular style of guitar playing over top of atmospheric composition on MEDDLE. I believe that the early Pink Floyd inspired the Krautrock and Electronic music scene. Especially when certain Krautrock bands emulated the Pink Floyd sound and when the guitar became more dominant in the Berlin style of Electronic music. Prior to that period in time, Electronic music was approached much differently. As Prog Rock often included lead guitar, so would Electronic music. A very strange observation is to listen to Trans Harmonic Nights by Peter Baumann and notice that he is producing the same style from 77' without the guitar nevertheless...and gives a sample of how less musically it's relation can be to Rock music. Although many of the patterns are easier to digest than Atem, Phadrea, or Rubycon, they don't represent such a Progressive Rock sound without the guitar.  

I know this sounds odd but I used to think of is as their first 'commercial' album.

 

a little more accessible I guess compared to the earlier stuff although I personally found everything after Electronic Meditation pretty accessible  ..

 

I do dig it though

 

It's not odd at all because many of my friends felt that Stratosfear was their first commercial album. That's actually funny to think about it in the present and only because of the separation of music styles over many decades causing a majority of people to not realize that observation..but it is in fact how a great many people felt in the 70's.

I wasn't born until 1982 and I feel the same 

Without a doubt their most commercial sounding album from the 70s, and that's including Force Majeure. 

The sound of the synths is very smooth and melodic and takes an overt step away from the more abstract universe of what came before. Probably also why it lured in so many rock fans at the time, or maybe that was just the guitar.

I do understand why most people prefer their more melodic albums though. After all, I think it's fair to state that there are more music fans in the world into melody and structure than there are those into freeform and abstract soundscapes. It'd be strange if it was the other way around. 

Probably you did although the word 'commercial' is not perhaps an adequate one to use as TD were selling a lot of albums before this. They changed their sound a bit but this could have just been a natural transition in style not a concious attempt to push into areas that would gain more fans. I could be very wrong though

I think, just like others have mentioned, that their sound changed exponentially with the synths they got a hold of. This is especially true from Stratosfear and onwards imo.

 

Those Trons were perfect for the timbres they wanted that synths couldn't quite produce yet. Guys like Emerson, Wakeman and Moraz used the biting sounds because they needed to play leads that stood out in music and soundmix. In TD, it was all about keyboards, so they focused more on atmospheres, at least until they decided to rock out a bit for Cyclone and Force Majeure.

 

That's why I like the years '75-'85 best (with '74 and '86 thrown in), because they had the best overall sound palette. When Chris Franke left, it was like a cannonball got dropped through the ceiling. A drastic effect, but not the desired one.

 

A melody can change over the course of the composition as the composer-player desired, but I know exactly what you mean. I use the word "motif" (often incorrectly) to identify the quality that you're targeting here. It's exactly why Stratosfear is a brilliant record. Those recurring thematic aspects make it the yang to Rubycon's yin.

TODDLER wrote: Guitar became more of a lead instrument in the music of Tangerine Dream beginning with Stratosfear. I personally believe several electronic bands were influenced by Edgar's guitar idea. The way that the band composed their electronic music on Stratosfear was more relative to Prog than pulsating electronics established within the electronic music world. The reason for this existed in the guitar lines. For example , Ash Ra Temple and Amon Duul II experimented with the guitar quite in the same fashion as the early Pink Floyd. You can even spot that particular style of guitar playing over top of atmospheric composition on MEDDLE. I believe that the early Pink Floyd inspired the Krautrock and Electronic music scene. Especially when certain Krautrock bands emulated the Pink Floyd sound and when the guitar became more dominant in the Berlin style of Electronic music. Prior to that period in time, Electronic music was approached much differently. As Prog Rock often included lead guitar, so would Electronic music. A very strange observation is to listen to Trans Harmonic Nights by Peter Baumann and notice that he is producing the same style from 77' without the guitar nevertheless...and gives a sample of how less musically it's relation can be to Rock music. Although many of the patterns are easier to digest than Atem, Phadrea, or Rubycon, they don't represent such a Progressive Rock sound without the guitar.

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Thanks, I really love this music.

 

Thank you and I find your posts of great interest.

I remember when Edgar and his son performed in Philadelphia and closed their show with Jimi Hendrix' "Purple Haze". It seemed to excite a lot of Rock fans. It wasn't an embarrassing thing for them to do..as it seemed they were innocently reaching out to a larger audience. At one point they worked in the studio with Chi Coltrane who was an outstanding pianist and vocalist who had a hit single in the early 70's titled "Thunder and Lightning". Even though she was very commercial, she was a fan of Progressive Rock. She drifted out of the limelight because it was too much strain on her private life. Apparently she followed Progressive Rock in the early 70's and was a crafty singer songwriter with a very unique voice. Commercial or non-commercial, Tangerine Dream have always associated with interesting artists.

 

 

Firestarter and Thief are the best examples of this for me. I've no idea how many hours I've invested listening to them.

 

The Park is Mine is another great OOP score, one with the '80-'85 line-up. It's closer in style to Thief than their others.

 

Yeah, that's nonsense. Not to mention Johannes' White Out is arguably more esoteric in feel than Zoo.