Tangarine Dream 10 cd set (heads up) £10.39

2 Left but more on the way?

One left now! Thanks. G

Really not their best period though.

You still have to pay for the Virgin releases, and to a lesser extent the Jive releases, plus the very early Ohm recordings.

If you do want some Tangerine Dream studio albums, better to spend money on 'Rubicon', 'Encore', 'Force Majeure', 'Tangram', 'Exit', 'White Eagle', 'Logos' and 'Poland', plus a few other albums.

After Chris Frank left in 1987, they became pretty irrelevant, and all this is from 1988 or later.

All a matter of personal taste I must admit, but recently the only Tangerine Dream albums I have bought are the original, not remastered releases on Ebay.

I have been working my way though yet more of the Tangerine Tree and Leaves fan releases (with the permission of the band) of their live performances from throughout their career. What some of the 1970's concert recordings lack in audio quality they make up for in inventiveness in the music, and some of the recordings are very good anyway.

In marked contrast to this bargain, the (official) 'Bootleg Box' releases fetch silly money on Ebay, and were available for free through the fans.

Got all the early stuff Jamie.  I thought it worth a punt for a tenner.  G

Thanks for posting your comments on this box-set, Jamie.

Although it looks very good value for money i can do without the spending these days so will resist the temptation.

I see the reviews on Amazon are rather polarized.

Debs

http://www.voices-in-the-net.de/voicesrc.htm  is a really good resource for Tangerine Dream's discography, official and otherwise.

I am sure if you want to try some of the tracks from this box set before buying they will be on the net at places like Amazon, Spotify, Tangerine Dream's own website, and even Youtube, etc.

Tangerine Dream are one of my favourite bands, I own all the Virgin releases, and also most of the Jive and Ohm albums. I probably also have around 200 unofficial live recordings (the Tangerine Tree did become a bit addictive for a while), in addition to their improvised live shows (up to 1980) there were also a great number of tracks that were never released on album, but still performed live regularly.

I have seen them four times, the first time (Logos/White Eagle tour) must be one of the best performances I have ever seen, the following UK tour 1986 was very enjoyable, but by the next time they reached these shores they had really lost it, 1990 I think, and a friend and I walked out of a show in 1996, it was tedious. I wish I had been old enough to see them with Peter Bauman, but sadly I was far too young.

I have heard some recordings of their more recent output, and although not as dire as their mid 90's low, it simply has none of the qualities that appeal to me from their peak in the 70's and early 80's. The percussionist does annoy a lot of fans though, and I would probably be one of them if I went to a show.

I have heard recordings of recent performances of early works like 'Phaedra' and 'Rubycon', and frankly they sound like someone with a DX7 messing about trying to do a copy without any of the feel of the original, a far cry from Jean Michel Jarre's 'Oxygene' tour of a couple of years ago using the original instruments and capturing the album brilliantly.

Thankfully there are a few bands around who were greatly inspired by their 70's music, and play live still, so seeing Redshift, Free System Projekt, Fanger & Schonwalder, Airsculpture and a few others. Seeing them is far more rewarding to me these days.

Just a word of thanks to you, JamieL_v2, and to Steve2701, for your posts on Redshift on the "What are you listening to" thread.

Tangerine Dream has long been music I like - I have everything up to Rubycon and was fortunate to see them live in March 1978 with the Laserium show (even then Peter Bauman had just left I think). For me their music lost its 'mojo' after Stratosfear and I stopped exploring them.

I had no idea anyone else had worked with those wonderful ancient analogue synths and had never heard of Redshift. Instead I have made do by listening to older players like Tim Blake, and more modern players like Richard Barbieri (great talent with synthesisers, although mostly newer digital technology) in the many variants of bands he has worked with.

And then there is Orb, and William Orbit, and Dark Globe, and Chemical Bros, Royksopp, System7, Brian Eno etc. But none of them use the Moog with authority, or authenticity.

There are 7 Redshift CDs available on their site and I have just ordered them all. Some stuff is out of print, but that is a good start. Spotify has a good range and I used that to check how brilliant they are.

So thanks again - and proof that it is worth us all posting about what we hear, and why it is good.

Will now try out some of the other names you mention.

Cheers

David

PS:  Stu - have also just got a bunch of Fink LPs and I think that may have started from you - so thanks also. 

As you can imagine I am pretty much in 100% agreement with Jamie here.

I have to say he has far more 'patience' that I do. I so, so wanted them to make more of those long wonderous soundscapes rather than the silly 5 minute interludes where nothing was allowed to expand or grow.

In fact I got so fed up of them after Lilly On the Beach I stopped listening to them entirely for several years.

They became impossible to keep up with what with this release - that release then all the film scores. I have doubts that any 'fan' likes their entire catalogue or even has it all to play, other than for 'completeness'.

It in fact took finding Redshift to even get me back into listening to Rubycon.

MrClick - I have made mention somewhere that collecting the entire back catalogue of Redshift can become wallet emptying - you have been warned. I think Ether and Downtime may now only be available as FLAC dowloads from Music Zeit? Unless you can find them on evilbay :-(

I waited up until 1.30am one morning to 'win' a copy of Redshift (I) and paid handsomely for the exercise. I was very happy to own it however. Right up to the point where I went to the Hampshire Jam only to find Mark Shreeve had 're engineered' and re-released it. He did give a free copy of Toll to compensate..

He also commented on just how much hard work the Moog Modular actually is. Very difficult to maintain and impossible to take to shows on a regular basis unless you are a full time tourer.

Redshift and the other bands in the scene are not going to get any airplay from mainstream media, and I only got to know them through being sent a compilation when I was collecting the aforementioned Tangerine Tree.

With the web, it is a (very) little easier to find such bands and:

http://www.musiczeit.com

which Steve mentions is great for Flac downloads, and if you want to see if the CDs are still available there is:

http://www.synthmusicdirect.com/

which is also run by the same person (Dave) who has now taken over running the Hampshire Jam, but it does miss some years.

http://www.grooveunlimited.nl/

is another website specializing in similar electronic music.

From the same scene I would recommend trying Arc (Ian Boddy and Michael Shreeve, who are now both in Redshift), 'Arcturus' is lovely 'Church' is pretty good too.

Free System Projekt are very like 70's Tangerine Dream, sometimes to much like them, but 'Moyland' is worth a try, and I am very fond of 'British Aisles' as it was a great concert to be at.

Other names to try and Airsculpture, Brendan Pollard, Fanger & Schonwalder, Radio Massacre International (I only like a couple of releases, but other are far more keen). There are dozens of samples by many artists to try on the above websites.

I can't really say much about the Tangerine Tree and Leaves, but I am sure that a Google search, or a look through Yahoo groups would reveal some things of interest. It is no longer making new releases, but then with around 200 concerts there was not a great deal more to find anyway.

Stu, I know what you mean about getting something like this compilation to try the later period with Tangerine Dream, once you have all the Virgin and other early releases this is probaby a good way to see if you do like the later material, and my comments on their music are very subjective.

Anyway, good to know people still enjoy Tangerine Dream and similar music.

All the best.

Jamie