GOBLINS' CLUB

Tendentially newage as many of the Tangerine Dream outputs of this period, this is not bad. Surely better than most of their movie soundtracks of the 80s, in this album we can hear some proper drums, something that If I'm not wrong, was absent from the TD lineup since Electronic Meditation.

There's a huge number of guests but at this oint TD is simply a family affair between Edgar Froese and his son Jerome who seems to be a decent drummer, too. Even if both the Froeses can play guitar, the lead guitarist when needed, is Mark Hornby. This wasn't his first collaboration with Tangerine Dream and won't be the last for few years. If this album sometimes sounds more like a Mike OLDFIELD one is possibly because Hornby played also in some Maggie Reilly's albums, so there's a link.

Apart of this curiosity this album doesn't have many points of interest. The music is melodic and is best sevred when the drumming is electronic, like in "Lamb With Radar Eyes", which is one of the best album tracks, featuring a good guitar riff from Hornby in which I see another connection to Maggie Reilly: he sounds similar to Fenn in the MASON+FENN album "Profiles" released 10 years before in which Maggie sung "Lie for a Lie". It's just a coincidence, by the way I think.

Looking at the track titles, it seems that there's a sort of concept which may explain also the album's title, but also this is just a guess. The mention to Merlin in the closing track's title doesn't say much. This track is also the longest and in my opinion the best. It has a bit of celtic mood in the beginning, then the old good square wave becomes the base for a melodic track which is still newage but in which we can capture some hints of the past glory.

So it's not an album to be thrown in the waste. Not one to which I'll return often, but good enough for about 40 minutes of light relax.