5 Stars *****
All of you who like “New Age Music”, “Electronic
Music”, “World Music’’, or even “Techno” owe a huge debt of
gratitude to this German rock band, who along with their fellow countrymen
‘Kraftwerk’ pioneered a whole new age of musical genres.
Originally a straight ahead Rock band the founding members of
Tangerine Dream soon discovered the many amazing sounds they could get out of
their instruments, and with the technology developing around them they were
riding the crest of a new and exciting musical wave.
‘Force Majeure’ was their big breakthrough album in 1979,
their thirteenth album altogether, and second for Richard Branson’s Virgin
Record label. The Virgin team had already had enormous success by taking a
chance and releasing Michael Oldfield’s ‘Tubular Bells’ to Platinum sales
worldwide, after all the major labels would not touch it. So Virgin and
Tangerine Dream made very suitable partners. The first album released on Virgin
had been the controversial ‘Cyclone’ album, when the band had played more
like a traditional rock band, including vocals, whilst forsaking some of the
sweeping synthesizers and ambient sounds, much to the despair of their fans.
But it only made for a quick re-think and vocalist Steve
Joliffe had left the band by the time they went back into the studio. The spacey
Tangerine Dream sound was back, but better than ever, with even more adventurous
effects and more structure to the songs. If songs is what you call these pieces
of music. The shortest piece clocks in at seven minutes and twenty one seconds,
while the opening title track is a massive eighteen and a half minutes. It opens
the album in grand style, keyboards come sweeping in after the opening theme,
building to a crashing climax with all instruments joining in one by one, layer
upon layer, before settling down when the opening theme is reintroduced on
acoustic guitar and the music takes of again at a more manageable pace.
A grand piano takes you off on one of Tangerine’s musical
journeys into the unknown. Soon Edgar Froese’s electric guitar comes into duel
with the piano before jumping off at a different tangent, before being brought
back into the song by the piano, allowing the keyboards to make themselves
heard. So at ten minutes along you are finally into the real meat of the music.
As the music takes a second to pause at the eleven minute mark, a ghost train
huffs and puffs its way across your speakers, taking you into a far more
sinister area of the Tangerine Dream mind, where the sounds of the mellotron,
VCS3, organ, e-piano, synthesizers, and flute leave you with a feeling of being
watched, whilst in the dark the sounds, emanating from the band, whisk from
speaker to speaker.
However, just before it gets too weird the keyboards come
back in with the main theme of the song and before you know it, you are back in
the musical sunshine, and all of the loose ends of the instruments tie together
to bring the music to a gloriously satisfying conclusion.
‘Cloudburst Flight’, although the shortest piece in this
collection, has the most infectious main riff with three minutes of pure genius
from Edgar Foese on the six-string. He brings the song to a thundering finale
with a guitar solo that has only ever been equalled by David Gilmour on the
corresponding solo to the end of ‘Pink Floyd’s “Comfortably Numb”. (Have
a listen - it really is that good.)
‘Thru Metamorphic Rock’ gives you an insight into the
direction in which Tangerine Dream were going in the future. For over fourteen
minutes you are hit by a repetitive beat played out on both acoustic and
electronic drums, whilst all the time, like two musical wizards, Froese and
Franke cast musical spells to drag you deeper into their web. As the rhythms
drive into your mind in almost a hypnotic manor, it leaves you wanting more once
it finishes.
There are now more than fifty Tangerine albums to choose
from, and that is not counting the hoards of live albums and compilations.
However, if you fancy a musical change or a step into another world, ‘Force
Majeure’ is as good a place to start as any.
If on first listening any of the themes seem familiar, this
is probably because all of them were used in the first movie to star Tom Cruise,
‘Risky Business’. The fantasy scene on the train being particularly
memorable. This movie helped to push both Tom Cruise and Tangerine Dream from
the second division into the major league.
These days there is still a band called Tangerine Dream with
guitarist Edgar Froese at the helm, but these days with a much more guitar based
sound. Gad Zooks! The last Tangerine Dream Live album even had a sonic version
of Hendrix’s ‘Purple Haze’ on it. Meanwhile his old partner Chris Franke
went on to have a very successful career as a solo artist, keeping the more
traditional Tangerine Dream sound alive. Whichever way these two very talented
artists are heading, they are well worth your attention.
Although all the music on ‘Force Majeure’ is quite
magnificent, my one adverse comment would be that the whole thing clocks in at
under forty minutes. In this day and age of CDs is this really value for money
to pay? Could not the record label have found some out-takes, live recordings,
or the pieces from the Risky Business Soundtrack, to have given the paying
punter more value for his hard earned buck? But a minor quibble when the
standard of what you get is so good. Perhaps it’s a case of “feel the
quality not the width”.
Book Review: Heritage 1