Tangerine Dream
Tangerine Dream is a German electronic music band founded in 1967 by Edgar 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, and Peter 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 of Thorsten Quaeschning. Quaeschning is Froese's chosen successor and is currently the longest-serving band member, having joined in 2005. Quaeschning is currently joined by violinist Hoshiko Yamane who joined in 2011 and Paul Frick who joined in 2020. Prior to this Quaeschning and Yamane performed with Ulrich Schnauss from 2014 to 2020. Schnauss only played two shows with Froese in November 2014 before Froese's passing.
For other uses, see Tangerine Dream (disambiguation).
Tangerine Dream
Berlin, Germany
1967–present
- Virgin
- Ohr
- Jive Electro
- Private Music
- Miramar
- TDI
- Eastgate
- Sequel/Castle/Sanctuary
- BMG
- Relativity
- Esoteric Reactive
- Kscope
- Caroline
- Invisible Hands
- Purple Pyramid
- Cleopatra[1]
- Free Union Records[2]
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
Tangerine Dream are considered a pioneering act in electronica.[3] Their work with the electronic music Ohr label produced albums that had a pivotal role in the development of the German musical scene known as kosmische Musik ("cosmic music"). Their "Virgin Years", so called because of their association with Virgin Records, produced albums that further explored synthesizers and sequencers, including the UK top 20 albums Phaedra (1974) and Rubycon (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 game Grand Theft Auto V. Their mid-1970s work has been profoundly influential in the development of electronic music styles such as new-age and electronic dance music.
On 29 September 2017, the band released an all-new music studio album entitled Quantum Gate. In December 2019, they released Recurring Dreams, a compilation of new recordings of some of the band's classic compositions. On 26 November 2021, the band released an EP entitled Probe 6–8 (including three tracks: "Raum", "Para Guy" and "Continuum"), whose concept was developed further on their following album Raum, their latest studio album to date which was released on 25 February 2022.
Lineup[edit]
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, including Steve Jolliffe, Sven-Åke Johansson, Klaus Schulze, and Conrad Schnitzler.[4]
Froese's most notable association was his partnership with Christopher Franke.[4] Franke joined Tangerine Dream in 1970 after serving time in the group Agitation Free, originally to replace Schulze as the drummer. Franke is credited with starting to use electronic sequencers, which were introduced on Phaedra, 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.[4]
Other long-term members of the group include Peter Baumann (1971–1977), who later went on to found the new-age label Private Music, to which the band was signed from 1988 to 1991; Johannes Schmoelling (1979–1985); Paul Haslinger (1986–1990); Froese's son Jerome Froese (1990–2006); Linda Spa (1990–1996, 2005–2014), a saxophonist & flute player who appeared on numerous albums and concerts, contributing one track on Goblins' Club; and most recently Thorsten 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 on Bootleg Box Set Vol. 1), Steve Jolliffe (wind instruments, keyboards and vocals on Cyclone and the following tour; he was also part of a short-lived 1969 line-up), Klaus Krüger (drummer on Cyclone and Force Majeure) and Ralf Wadephul (in collaboration with Edgar Froese recorded album Blue Dawn, but it was released only in 2006; also credited for one track on Optical 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 of Jeanne d'Arc (2005). For concerts and recordings, they were usually joined by Linda Spa on saxophone and flute, Iris Camaa on drums and percussion, and Bernhard Beibl on guitar. In 2011, electric violinist Hoshiko Yamane was added to the lineup and is featured on some of the most recent albums.[5]
In late 2014, Bernhard Beibl announced on his Facebook 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 that Ulrich Schnauss had been brought into the fold. Edgar Froese's death in January 2015, however, left this a short-lived line-up.[6]
History[edit]
Origins: psychedelia and krautrock[edit]
Edgar Froese arrived in West Berlin in the mid-1960s to study art. His first band, the psychedelic rock-styled The 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 famous Zodiak Free Arts Lab, although one grouping also had the distinction of being invited to play for the surrealist painter Salvador Dalí. The music was partnered with literature, painting, early forms of multimedia, 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 the Surrealists, 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" from the Beatles' track "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds".[7]
Froese was fascinated by technology and skilled in using it to create music. He built custom-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 the sequencer, which Tangerine Dream quickly adopted upon its arrival.
Released in 1970 by record label Ohr, the first Tangerine Dream album, Electronic Meditation, was a tape-collage Krautrock 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, and Conrad Schnitzler. Electronic Meditation began the period known as the Pink Years (the Ohr logo was a pink ear). Subsequent albums, beginning with Alpha Centauri, relied heavily on electronic instruments. The band's music during the early 1970s prominently featured organ from Steve Schroyder (on Alpha Centauri) or Peter Baumann (on subsequent releases), commonly augmented by guitar from Froese and drums from Christopher Franke. They also started their heavy usage of the Mellotron during this period.[8]
Rise to fame: the Virgin years[edit]
The band's 1973 album Atem was named as one of British DJ John Peel's records of the year, and this attention helped Tangerine Dream to sign to the fledgling Virgin Records in the same year.[4] Soon afterward they released the album Phaedra, an eerie soundscape that unexpectedly reached No. 15 in the UK Albums Chart and became one of Virgin's first bona fide hits.[4] 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 acquired Moog synthesizer, and the tape happened to be rolling at the time. They kept the results and later added flute, bass guitar, and Mellotron 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 as new-age (although the band themselves disliked the term)[9] and electronic dance music.[10]
In the 1980s, along with other electronic music pioneers such as Jean-Michel Jarre (with whom Edgar Froese collaborated on Jarre's 2015 album Electronica 1: The Time Machine) and Vangelis, the band were early adopters of the new digital 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 live[edit]
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 at York 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-scale Laserium effects.
Through the 1970s and 1980s, the band toured extensively. The concerts generally included large amounts of unreleased and improvised material and were consequently widely bootlegged. 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.