RUBYCON

Tangerine Dream never got better than this. All the albums up to this point were a search for where they wanted to be. On Rubycon they found that place. After this they wanted to make some money too, but you could hardly accuse TD of "selling out". Even their '80s music was more adventurous than most of the stuff coming out of that decade. I'm an analogue synth junkie, and by that I don't mean I inject synthesizers into my arm, I just love the way they sound. Especially the monophonic ones; once polyphonic synths became popular in the late '70s, keyboardists started playing synths like they were organs...and the music suffered because of that, IMO. Here they use EMS Synthi & VCS3, Moog and ARP 2600 synths. In addition, there is Mellotron, organ, electric piano and guitar. I can hear what sounds like a drum machine as well, but this could just be a programmed sequence of one of the synths(even though drum machines were being used as early as 1971).

Part 2 has always been my fav...this would make great Halloween music, especially the first few minutes. The modified Mellotron choirs sound creepy, and by creepy I mean *awesome*! Froese's guitar played backwards sounds really good too. That's the thing about this album that seperates it from what came before: it sounds like they tried to make a whole album and not just release some improvisations they recorded. The sequencer work here is a vast improvemnet over Phaedra, where they sounded like they were literally trying to figure out how to use their new toys.

The mix of gong and sequencers on Part 1 is nice. The bird-like noises mixed with the atmospheric synths and 'Tron always reminds me of walking on the beach. I truly think this deserves 5 stars and shows TD at the point in their career where they left behind the pure experimentation(Zeit), but before they wanted to make more accessible music(Cyclone). A happy medium if you will. If you are not into instrumental music that can be spacey and trippy on one hand, rhythmic and slightly melodic on the other, then this is probably not the album for you. For those who absolutely love Symphonic Prog, you should probably try Force Majeure first. Big lovers of the Metal subs and Heavy Prog probably won't care much for anything TD did. But everyone else should give Rubycon a try...you might like it.