Probably in 1972 I saw Tangerine Dream in a TV docu about German rock music. Long organ chords with loads of reverberation, I was fascinated. These were sounds I've never heard before this way. One day later I walked into our local Govi record store and bought the one Tangerine Dream album they had: Alpha Centauri (1971, the original "Ohr" pressing!). It was more or less what I saw in this TV docu, a bit pathetic, a bit druggy, but still today I like side 1.
But then I forgot about Tangerine Dream. A couple of years later, NDR radio had a radio essay about something, it was late at night, and they had 20 minutes time until the next news had to be aired. They filled this time with Tangerine Dream's Ricochet, Part 2 (1975). This was completely different from the Alpha Centauri stuff, much more clear, organized, composed. I was completely floored, and the next evening I had this album.
In the late 1970s and the 1980s, Tangerine Dream became one of the important soundtracks of my life. There were times when I was hardly able to listen to any "normal" music instead, and Tangerine Dream were surely the big force that made me starting to play several synthesizers myself.
In the 1990s my interest in Tangerine Dream declined. There were too many recordings, especially too many film soundtracks for second-rate movies -- too uniform, too much stuff to follow. I rediscovered Tangerine Dream when a friend sent me the link to a video from their "Electric Mandarine Tour" from 2012:
With this line-up I enjoyed them again.
Edgar Froese was the only constant member of Tangerine Dream for the more than 40 years of their career. He was heart and soul of the band. You have to listen to his solo recordings to really get how much his ideas were the fundament of what the band did. One of my favorites is still Epsilon In Malaysian Pale (1975, the original, not the later remix version) -- which was a favorite also of David Bowie and Brian Eno.
Edgar Froese left the building unexpectedly on January 20, 2015, after suffering a pulmonary embolism. As he once said, death is nothing but changing the cosmic address. However, Edgar, under your old address you will be missed.
