Phaedra Dreams

The first time I heard Tangerine Dream was when I was in High School. Yes, it might seem odd a High School kid hearing this, but one night I turned on radio to do my homework and I heard this odd music that did not have any drums or any typical rock or jazz beats and rhythms to it. It was when I first started listening to a radio show that I would listen to for a long time. I found out a few years later that this radio show had been going on since the mid 1970's. The same DJ doing the same genre changing, musical exploration for years. He still is on the air once a month too. I heard him the other day, you can always tell when he is on the air because he play's his signature artist or artists that he loves.

The Tangerine Dream music he played was quite different then what I heard music to be like in High School. I liked it because it was soothing and also expressive and different in the same way. My thought at first hearing was that this is what space music is all about. If I was in space this would be my soundtrack. It did not take too long to convince me to look for this at the record store. Sadly, the LP's were expensive and the CD's were cheap. In the early years of Virgin records they pressed these wonderful CD's with better sonic clarity then the later. This resulted in cheap CD's. The early ones were replaced by their owners and the early ones were in the used CD bins for $5.00. I grabbed about four early Tangerine Dream CD's for next to nothing. I still have them too.



The uniqueness of Tangerine Dream is the fact they are truly the fathers of space music. With the space program in full effect in the 1970's they were a band to understand. Given focus by the arpeggiated trance that drifts in and out of the mix, the track progresses through several passages including a few surprisingly melodic keyboard lines and an assortment of eerie Moog and Mellotron effects, gaseous explosions, and windy sirens. Despite the impending chaos, the track sounds more like a carefully composed classical work than an unrestrained piece of noise. (AM) Thanks Allmusic for that description I could not say it any better.

There are only four tracks on the record and each has a unique take on space travel. It is definitely a different direction, but this direction is fun. I don't know much about the music of Tangerine Dream. I know that the four CD's that I own of theirs are wonderful and fresh. It does not take long to realize that Tangerine Dream started a lot of musical heads thinking about the music they were making. People like Aphex Twin, Underworld and Orb just to name a few owe Tangerine Dream a debt of gratitude. The music hear is new and fresh and worth every listen.



Phaedra is one of the most important, artistic, and exciting works in the history of electronic music, a brilliant and compelling summation of Tangerine Dream's early avant-space direction balanced with the synthesizer/sequencer technology just beginning to gain a foothold in nonacademic circles.(AM) I am not sure where I put them in my musical influences but they would be up their with the best. Every once in a while I realize their impact by hearing the music as fresh as the day it was created. Enjoy this one and tell me what you think! Rock on!