Tangerine Dream | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Performing in 2024 at theBarbican Centre, London (l–r:Hoshiko Yamane,Thorsten Quaeschning,Paul Frick) | |
| Background information | |
| Origin | West Berlin, Germany |
| Genres | |
| Years active | 1967–present |
| Labels |
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| Members | Thorsten Quaeschning Hoshiko Yamane Paul Frick |
| Past members | Edgar Froese Lanse Hapshash Kurt Herkenberg Volker Hombach Charlie Prince Steve Jolliffe Klaus Schulze Conrad Schnitzler Christopher Franke Steve Schroyder Peter Baumann Michael Hoenig Klaus Krüger Johannes Schmoelling Paul Haslinger Ralf Wadephul Jerome Froese Linda Spa Zlatko Perica Iris Camaa Bernhard Beibl Ulrich Schnauss |
| Website | tangerinedreammusic |
Tangerine Dream is a Germanelectronic music band founded in 1967 byEdgar Froese. The group has seen many personnel changes over the years, with Froese the only constant member until his death in January 2015. The best-known lineup of the group was its mid-1970s trio of Froese,Christopher Franke, andPeter Baumann. In 1979,Johannes Schmoelling replaced Baumann until his own departure in 1985. This lineup was notable for composing many movie soundtracks. Since Froese's death in 2015, the group has been under the leadership ofThorsten Quaeschning. Quaeschning is Froese's chosen successor and is currently the longest-serving band member, having joined in 2005. Quaeschning is currently joined by violinistHoshiko Yamane who joined in 2011 andPaul Frick who joined in 2020. Prior to this Quaeschning and Yamane performed withUlrich Schnauss from 2014 to 2020. Schnauss only played two shows with Froese in November 2014 before Froese's passing.
Tangerine Dream are considered a pioneering act inelectronica.[3] Their work with the electronic musicOhr label produced albums that had a pivotal role in the development of the German musical scene known askosmische Musik ("cosmic music"). Their "Virgin Years", so called because of their association withVirgin Records, produced albums that further exploredsynthesizers andsequencers, including the UK top 20 albumsPhaedra (1974) andRubycon (1975). The group also had a successful career composing film soundtracks, creating over 60 scores.
From the late 1990s into the 2000s, Tangerine Dream continued to explore other styles of instrumental music as well as electronica. Their recorded output has been prolific, including over one hundred albums. Among other scoring projects, they helped create the soundtrack for the video gameGrand Theft Auto V. Their mid-1970s work has been profoundly influential in the development of electronic music styles such asnew-age andelectronic dance music.
On 29 September 2017, the band released an all-new music studio album entitledQuantum Gate. In December 2019, they releasedRecurring Dreams, a compilation of new recordings of some of the band's classic compositions. On 26 November 2021, the band released an EP entitledProbe 6–8 (including three tracks: "Raum", "Para Guy" and "Continuum"), whose concept was developed further on their following albumRaum, their latest studio album to date which was released on 25 February 2022.
Edgar Froese arrived inWest Berlin in the mid-1960s to study art. His first band, thepsychedelic rock-styledThe Ones, disbanded after releasing only one single. After The Ones, Froese experimented with musical ideas, playing smaller gigs with a variety of musicians. Most of these performances were in the famousZodiak Free Arts Lab, although one grouping also had the distinction of being invited to play for the surrealist painterSalvador Dalí. The music was partnered with literature, painting, early forms ofmultimedia, and more. It seemed as though only the most outlandish ideas attracted any attention, leading Froese to comment: "In the absurd often lies what is artistically possible." As members of the group came and went, the direction of the music continued to be inspired by theSurrealists, and the group came to be called by the surreal-sounding name of Tangerine Dream, inspired by mishearing the line "tangerine trees and marmalade skies" fromthe Beatles' track "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds".[4]
Froese was fascinated by technology and skilled in using it to create music. He builtcustom-made instruments and, wherever he went, collected sounds with tape recorders for use in constructing musical works later. His early work with tape loops and other repeating sounds was the obvious precursor to the emerging technology of thesequencer, which Tangerine Dream quickly adopted upon its arrival.
Released in 1970 by record labelOhr, the first Tangerine Dream album,Electronic Meditation, was a tape-collageKrautrock piece, using the technology of the time rather than the synthesized music they later became famous for. The line-up for the album was Froese, Klaus Schulze, andConrad Schnitzler.Electronic Meditation began the period known as thePink Years (the Ohr logo was a pink ear). Subsequent albums, beginning withAlpha Centauri, relied heavily on electronic instruments. The band's music during the early 1970s prominently featured organ from Steve Schroyder (onAlpha Centauri) orPeter Baumann (on subsequent releases), commonly augmented by guitar from Froese and drums fromChristopher Franke. They also started their heavy usage of theMellotron during this period.[5]
The band's 1973 albumAtem was named as one of British DJJohn Peel's records of the year, and this attention helped Tangerine Dream to sign to the fledglingVirgin Records in the same year.[6] Soon afterward, they released the albumPhaedra, an eerie soundscape that unexpectedly reached No. 15 in theUK Albums Chart and became one of Virgin's first bona fide hits.[6]Phaedra was one of the first commercial albums to feature sequencers and came to define much more than just the band's own sound. The creation of the album's title track was something of an accident: the band was experimenting in the studio with a recently acquiredMoog synthesizer, and the tape happened to be rolling at the time. They kept the results and later added recorder, bass guitar, andMellotron performances. The Moog, like many other early synthesizers, was so sensitive to changes in temperature that its oscillators would drift badly in tuning as the equipment warmed up, and this drift can easily be heard on the final recording. This album marked the beginning of the period known as the 'Virgin Years'.
Their mid-1970s work has been profoundly influential in the development of electronic music styles such asnew-age (although the band themselves disliked the term)[7] andelectronic dance music.[8]
In the 1980s, along with other electronic music pioneers such asJean-Michel Jarre (with whom Edgar Froese collaborated on Jarre's 2015 albumElectronica 1: The Time Machine) andVangelis, the band were early adopters of the newdigital technology, which revolutionized the sound of the synthesizer, although the group had been using digital equipment (in some shape or form) as early as the mid-1970s. Their technical competence and extensive experience in their early years with self-made instruments and unusual means of creating sounds meant that they were able to exploit this new technology to make music quite unlike anything heard before.
Tangerine Dream's earliest concerts were visually simple by modern standards, with three men sitting motionless for hours alongside massive electronic boxes festooned with patch cords and a few flashing lights. Some concerts were even performed in complete darkness, as happened during the performance atYork Minster on 20 October 1975. As time went on and technology advanced, the concerts became much more elaborate, with visual effects, lighting, lasers, pyrotechnics, and projected images. By 1977 their North American tour featured full-scaleLaserium effects.
Through the 1970s and 1980s, the band toured extensively. The concerts generally included large amounts of unreleased and improvised material and were consequently widelybootlegged. They were notorious for playing extremely loudly and for a long time. The band released recordings of a fair number of their concerts, and on some of these the band worked out material that would later form the backbone of their studio recordings.
Most of Tangerine Dream's albums are entirely instrumental. Two earlier albums that prominently featured lyrics wereCyclone (1978)[9] andTyger (1987). While there were occasionally a few vocals on the band's other releases, such as the track "Kiew Mission" from 1981'sExit and "The Harbor" from 1987'sShy People, the group only returned to featuring vocals on a larger scale in a musical trilogy based onDante'sDivine Comedy. This was followed by a 2007 albumMadcap's Flaming Duty and a 2010 cover collectionUnder Cover – Chapter One.
After their 1980East Berlin gig, when they became one of the first major Western bands to perform in a communist country, Tangerine Dream released a double live album of one of their performances there, calledPoland, recorded during their tour in the winter at the end of 1983. WithPoland, the band moved to the Jive Electro label, marking the beginning of theBlue Years.[10]
Throughout the 1980s, Tangerine Dream composed scores for more than 20 films. This had been an interest of Froese's since the late 1960s, when he scored and acted in the experimental film "Auf Scheißer schießt man nicht", directed byHansjürgen Pohland. Many of the group's soundtracks were composed at least partially of reworked material from the band's studio albums or work that was in progress for upcoming albums; see, for example, the resemblance between the track "Igneous" on their soundtrack forThief and the track "Thru Metamorphic Rocks" on their studio releaseForce Majeure. Their first exposure on US television came when a track for the then in-progress albumLe Parc was used as the theme for the television program,Street Hawk. Some of the more famous soundtracks have beenSorcerer,Thief,Legend,Risky Business,The Keep,[11]Firestarter,[12]Flashpoint,[13]Heartbreakers,Shy People, andNear Dark.[14][15]
Tangerine Dream also composed 35 hours of music stems for the video game,Grand Theft Auto V.[16]
In 2016, Tangerine Dream released their own version of thetheme music for the television seriesStranger Things.[17] Tangerine Dream had inspired music for the series.[17]
Several of the band's albums released during the 1990s were nominated for Grammy Awards.[18] Since then, Tangerine Dream with Jerome Froese took a directional change away from the new-age leanings of those albums and toward an electronica style. After Jerome's departure, founder Edgar Froese steered the band in a direction somewhat reminiscent of material throughout their career.
In later years, Tangerine Dream released albums in series. TheDream Mixes series began in 1995 with the last being released in 2010. TheDivine Comedy series, based on the writings of Dante Alighieri, spanned 2002–2006. From 2007 to 2010, theFive Atomic Seasons were released. Most recently, theEastgate Sonic Poems series, based on the works of famous poetic authors such as Edgar Allan Poe and Franz Kafka, began in 2011, with the last appearing in 2013. Also, beginning in 2007, Tangerine Dream released a number of EPs, referred to as "CupDiscs" by the band.
Edgar Froese also released a number of solo recordings, which are similar in style to Tangerine Dream's work. Jerome Froese released a number of singles as TDJ Rome, which are similar to his work within theDream Mixes series. In 2005, he released his first solo albumNeptunes under the name Jerome Froese. In 2006, Jerome left Tangerine Dream to concentrate on his solo career. His second solo albumShiver Me Timbers was released on 29 October 2007, and his third,Far Side of the Face, was released in 2012. Beginning in 2011, Jerome Froese joined with former Tangerine Dream member Johannes Schmoelling and keyboardist Robert Waters to form the band Loom, which plays original material, as well as Tangerine Dream classics. Thorsten Quaeschning, leader of Picture Palace Music, was brought into Tangerine Dream in 2005 and contributed to most of the band's albums and CupDiscs since then.
The group had recording contracts with Ohr, Virgin,Jive Electro, Private Music, and Miramar, and many of the minor soundtracks were released on Varèse Sarabande. In 1996, the band founded their own record label,TDI, and more recently,Eastgate. Subsequent albums are today generally not available in normal retail channels but are sold bymail-order or through online channels. The same applies to their Miramar releases, the rights to which the band bought back. Meanwhile, their Ohr and Jive Electro catalogs (known as the "Pink" and "Blue" Years) are currently owned byEsoteric Recordings.
Since 2017, Tangerine Dream has been signed to the independent labelKscope, which has released their studio albums Quantum Gate, Recurring Dreams and Raum.
To celebrate their 40th anniversary (1967–2007), Tangerine Dream announced their only UK concert: at London Astoria on 20 April 2007. The band also played a totally free open-air concert inEberswalde on 1 July 2007 and at theAlte Oper in Frankfurt on Main on 7 October 2007. 2008 saw the band inEindhoven Netherlands playing at E-Day (an electronic music festival); later in the year they also played the Night of the Prog Festival inLoreley, Germany, as well as concerts at the Kentish Town Forum, in London on 1 November, at the Picture House, Edinburgh on 2 November, and their first live concert in the US for over a decade, at theUCLARoyce Hall, Los Angeles on 7 November.
In 2009, the group announced that they would play a concert at theRoyal Albert Hall in London, on 1 April 2010, titled the Zeitgeist concert, 35 years after their milestone concert there on 2 April 1975. The entire concert was released as a 3-CD live album on 7 July 2010.[19]
Tangerine Dream embarked in spring and summer 2012 on a tour of Europe, Canada and the USA calledThe Electric Mandarine Tour 2012:[20] The 1st leg was a 5-date European tour, beginning on 10 April in Budapest (Hungary) via Padua (Italy), Milano (Italy), Zurich (Switzerland), and ending on 10 May in Berlin (Germany). The 2nd leg was a North-American tour that started with the Jazz Festival in Montréal (Canada) on 30 June, followed by a concert on 4 July at the Bluesfest in Ottawa (Canada) and continued as a 10-date US journey beginning in July in Boston, then New York, Philadelphia, Washington, and California. On 16 November 2014, Tangerine Dream performed in Melbourne, Australia, as part of Melbourne Music Week. They were the final shows with Froese.[21] Tangerine Dream played two consecutive nights at theUnion Chapel, Islington London on April 23 & 24 2018, the second supported by ex-Japan andPorcupine Tree musicianRichard Barbieri.[citation needed] In October and November 2019, Tangerine Dream went on its 16 stepRandom & Revision Tour.
2023 saw the band embark on the largest tour of their entire career, including a 19-date tour of North America (September 8 – October 5: taking in Miami, Asheville, Atlanta, Dallas, Austin, Albuquerque, Tucson, San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, Vancouver, Seattle, Philadelphia, Washington, New York, Montreal, Toronto and Chicago), 13-dates in Germany (October 10 – 28), and 10-dates in the UK (November 5 – 14)[22][23][24]
Edgar Froese died suddenly inVienna on 20 January 2015 from apulmonary embolism.[25][26] On 6 April 2015, the group's remaining members (Quaeschning, Schnauss and Yamane) and Bianca Acquaye (Froese's widow), pledged to continue working together in an effort to fulfill Froese's vision for the group. However, ex-memberJerome Froese announced on his Facebook timeline that, in his opinion, Tangerine Dream will not exist without his father.[27]
Tangerine Dream played their first show following Froese's death on 9 June 2016 inSzczecin, Poland.[28]
On 29 September 2017, Tangerine Dream released their new studio album entitled,Quantum Gate, celebrating the 50th anniversary of the band's foundation. The album is based on ideas and musical sketches by founder Edgar Froese and was completed by the remaining members of the band.[29]
On 31 January 2020, Tangerine Dream re-released their December 2019 albumRecurring Dreams, an eleven-track collection of new recordings of some of the band's classic tracks, worldwide throughKscope. This was launched to coincide with theTangerine Dream: Zeitraffer exhibition, which opened on 17 January 2020 atLondon'sBarbican and runs until 2 May 2020.[30]
On 9 June 2020,Paul Frick became the first member to join the group following Edgar's death after having made guest appearances with the band, starting in November 2018. Later on, the group started working on a new studio album entitled,Raum, featuring Froese's archival recordings in early 2022 via Kscope.[31] Frick has the unique distinction of being the first addition to the group who did not ever personally meet Froese.[32]
It was announced on 22 June 2021 that Ulrich Schnauss has decided to stop performing live. Since then, the band's official website lists him as a former member.[33]
In March 2023, the band embarked on the longest tour of their entire career, with concerts in Portugal (Casa da Música), Switzerland (Geneva's Electron Festival), the Netherlands (3-date tour), Belgium (Het Depot), France (La Gaîté Lyrique), Poland (2-date tour), Romania (Transilvania International Film Festival), the United States (16-date tour), Canada (3-date tour), Germany (12-date tour), the United Kingdom (10-date tour), and Poland (1-date).
Tangerine Dream began as a surrealkrautrock band, with each of the members contributing different musical influences and styles, before becoming a "reveredprogressive electronic act."[34] Edgar Froese's guitar style was inspired byJimi Hendrix,[35] as well as the avant-garde composersIannis Xenakis andKarlheinz Stockhausen, while Christopher Franke contributed elements ofGyörgy Ligeti andTerry Riley.Yes-like progressive rock influence was brought in bySteve Jolliffe onCyclone. The sample-based sound collages of Johannes Schmoelling drew their inspiration from a number of sources; one instance isSteve Reich'sMusic for 18 Musicians on parts ofLogos Live, and the track "Love on a Real Train" from theRisky Business soundtrack.[36]
Classical music has had an influence on the sound of Tangerine Dream over the years.György Ligeti,Johann Sebastian Bach,Pierre Boulez,Iannis Xenakis,Maurice Ravel, andArcangelo Corelli are clearly visible as dominant influences in the early albums. A Baroque sensibility sometimes informs the more coordinated sequencer patterns, which has its most direct expression in theLa Folia section that comes at the very end of the title track of Force Majeure. In live performances, the piano solos often directly quoted from Romantic classical works for piano, such as the Beethoven and Mozart snippets in much of the late 1970s – early 1980s stage shows. In the bootleg recording of theMannheim Mozartsaal concert of 1976 (Tangerine Tree volume 13), the first part of the first piece also clearly quotes fromFranz Liszt'sTotentanz. The first phrase is played on a harpsichord synthesizer patch and is answered by the second half of the phrase in a flute voicing on aMellotron. During the 1990s, many releases included recordings of classical compositions:Pictures at an Exhibition (onTurn of the Tides),Largo (from Xerxes) (onTyranny of Beauty), Symphony in A Minor (by J. S. Bach), and Concerto in A Major / Adagio (byWolfgang Amadeus Mozart) (both onAmbient Monkeys).
Since the 1990s, Tangerine Dream have also recorded cover versions of Jimi Hendrix' "Purple Haze" (first on220 Volt Live) andThe Beatles' "Eleanor Rigby", "Back in the U.S.S.R.", "Tomorrow Never Knows", and "Norwegian Wood".
An infrequently recurring non-musical influence on Tangerine Dream, and Edgar Froese in particular, have been 12th–19th-century poets. This was first evident on the 1981 albumExit, the track title"Pilots of the Purple Twilight" being a quote fromAlfred Lord Tennyson's poemLocksley Hall. Six years later, the albumTyger featured poems fromWilliam Blake set to music; and around the turn of the millennium, Edgar Froese started working on a musical trilogy based onDante Alighieri'sDivine Comedy, completed in 2006. Most recently, the 2007 albumMadcap's Flaming Duty features more poems set to music, some again from Blake but also e.g.Walt Whitman.
Pink Floyd were also an influence on Edgar Froese and Tangerine Dream, the band in its very early psychedelic rock band phase playing improvisations based on Pink Floyd's "Interstellar Overdrive".Madcap's Flaming Duty is dedicated to the memory of the lateSyd Barrett. The title refers to Barrett's solo releaseThe Madcap Laughs.
The band's influence can be felt in ambient artists such as Deepspace,The Future Sound of London,David Kristian, andGlobal Communication, as well as rock, pop, and dance artists such asPorcupine Tree,M83,DJ Shadow,Ulrich Schnauss,Cut Copy, andKasabian. The band also clearly influenced 1990s and 2000strance music, notablyChicane; both "Offshore" and "Sunstroke" borrow heavily from "Love on a Real Train"[37] where lush soundscapes andsynth pads are used along with repetitivesynth sequences, much like in their 1975 releasesRubycon andRicochet, as well as some of their music from the early 1980s. The group have also been sampled countless times, more recently byRecoil on the albumSubHuman, bySasha onInvolver, and on several Houzan Suzuki albums.Michael Jackson also expressed being a fan of Tangerine Dream, specifically their 1977 soundtrack for the filmSorcerer. It inspired him to get aSynclavier II, which a demo of would be used as the intro forBeat It.[38][39]
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Tangerine Dream existed as several short-lived incarnations, all of which included Froese, who teamed up with several musicians from West Berlin's underground music scene, includingSteve Jolliffe,Sven-Åke Johansson,Klaus Schulze, andConrad Schnitzler.[6]
Froese's most notable association was his partnership withChristopher Franke.[6] Franke joined Tangerine Dream in 1970 after serving time in the groupAgitation Free, originally to replace Schulze as the drummer. Franke is credited with starting to use electronic sequencers, which were introduced onPhaedra, a development that had not only a large impact on the group's music but on many electronic musicians to this day. Franke stayed with the group for 17 years, leaving in 1988 because of exhausting touring schedules, as well as creative differences with Froese.[6]
Other long-term members of the group includePeter Baumann (1971–1977), who later went on to found thenew-age labelPrivate Music, to which the band was signed from 1988 to 1991;Johannes Schmoelling (1979–1985);Paul Haslinger (1986–1990); Froese's sonJerome Froese (1990–2006);Linda Spa (1990–1996, 2005–2014), a saxophonist & flute player who appeared on numerous albums and concerts, contributing one track onGoblins' Club; and most recentlyThorsten Quaeschning of Picture Palace Music (2005–present).
A number of other members were also part of Tangerine Dream for shorter periods of time. Unlike session musicians, these players also contributed to compositions of the band during their tenures. Some of the more notable members are Steve Schroyder (organist, 1971–1972),Michael Hoenig (who replaced Baumann for a 1975 Australian tour and a London concert, included onBootleg Box Set Vol. 1),Steve Jolliffe (wind instruments, keyboards and vocals onCyclone and the following tour; he was also part of a short-lived 1969 line-up), Klaus Krüger (drummer onCyclone andForce Majeure) andRalf Wadephul (in collaboration with Edgar Froese recorded albumBlue Dawn, but it was released only in 2006; also credited for one track onOptical Race (1988) and toured with the band in support of this album).
Throughout the 1990s and into the 2000s, Tangerine Dream was often joined on stage by Zlatko Perica or Gerald Gradwohl on guitars, and Emil Hachfeld on electronic drums. Jerome Froese left in 2006 after a concert at the Tempodrom in Berlin. Until late 2014, Tangerine Dream comprised Edgar Froese, as well as Thorsten Quaeschning, who first collaborated in the composition ofJeanne d'Arc (2005). For concerts and recordings, they were usually joined byLinda Spa on saxophone and flute, Iris Camaa on drums and percussion, and Bernhard Beibl on guitar. In 2011, electric violinistHoshiko Yamane was added to the lineup and is featured on some of the most recent albums.[44]
In late 2014, Bernhard Beibl announced on hisFacebook page that he would stop collaborating with Tangerine Dream. Shortly thereafter, it was announced that Tangerine Dream would no longer be touring with Linda Spa or Iris Camaa, but thatUlrich Schnauss had been brought into the fold. Edgar Froese's death in January 2015, however, left this a short-lived line-up.[45]
Bianca Froese-Acquaye, Edgar Froese's widow, has taken up the mantle of continuing the legacy of the group and works closely in a non-musical capacity with the remaining members.
| 1967–1968 | 1968–1969 | 1969 | 1969–1970 |
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| 1970–1971 | 1971–1975 | 1975 | 1975–1977 |
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| 1977–1978 | 1978 | 1978–1979 | 1979–1985 |
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| 1985–1986 | 1986–1987 | 1987–1988 | 1988 |
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| 1988–1990 | 1990 | 1990–1992 | 1992–1996 |
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| 1996–1997 | 1997–2001 | 2001–2005 | 2005–2006 |
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| 2006–2011 | 2011–2014 | 2014–2015 | 2015–2020 |
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| 2020–present | |||
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Tangerine Dream has released over one hundred albums (not counting compilations and fan releases) over the last five decades. A project to collect and release fan concert recordings, known as theTangerine Tree, was active from 2002 to 2006.
Core catalogue
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