Tangerine Dream can be an insurmountable mountain. They virtually invented popular electronic music, and they’ve released over 100 albums. In the 1970s, they crafted left-field records like Phaedra and Zeit. In the 1980s, they made soundtracks for everything from Legend to Risky Business.
(They also did some stuff we won’t talk about.)
Needless to say, a band doesn’t exist for five decades without going through some changes. Their sound was always evolving, and so was the lineup. When founder Edgar Froese passed away in 2015, things were left uncertain. His widow Bianca provided the band with tape archives and software patches, and they’ve integrated some of that into the new record. The current roster consists of longtime music director Thorsten Quaeschning, violinist Hoshiko Yamane, Paul Frick, and Ulrich Scnhauss.
So, how is it? Well, it’s Tangerine Dream. And I’d say they’re in top form.
Of course, somebody’s going to mention that ‘You’re Always on Time’ sounds like something from Stranger Things or that the title track evokes Steve Roach. They have it backwards. Tangerine Dream invented this stuff. Everyone else (myself included) just gets to frolic in the playground they built.
So which Tangerine Dream is this? It’s pretty much an update to their 1980s Berlin School period. ‘Continuum’ opens with the expected arpeggios and pad swells. The drum machine is, well, it’s there. It feels like a lazy placeholder for the rest of the song, which is decent but not great. There’s just a hint of some acid bass at the 3-minute mark, but nothing interesting is done with it.
(Barker’s excellent remix would have been a better opener.)
Things pick up on the second track. It’s unclear if Ulrich Schnauss was part of the lineup for this record, but ‘Portico’ has his buoyant melodic swells. It does a great deal with its 7 minutes.
‘In 256 Zeichen’ is the heart of the record, 19 minutes of distilled ‘we still know how to do this better than anyone.’ It comes together over a bed of plush chords while a warbly drone plays out underneath. At the 5-minute mark, there’s a dropout, and Yamane’s violin loops and layers itself before merging with the synth ostinatos. Things swell and build throughout, and it ends in a very different place than it began.
‘You’re Always on Time’ could be mistaken for a really good synthwave track, except…well, what did I say before? They own this stuff. While it certainly feels a bit like a throwback, the glitchy aspects and the grimy bass near the end are a bit too aggressive for that. Part of the reason I enjoy it may be the fact it seems to flirt a bit with cliche.
The problem with ‘Along the Canal’ is it just can’t get beyond that. It’s not bad. It’s just pleasant without making much of an impression.
‘What You Should Know about Endings’ is somewhat playful for them. This is pretty much the song Boards of Canada have been making for two decades, full of detuned analog patches and comb filtering. But while the Sandison brothers would have added a loping hip-hop beat and a grainy sepia sheen to the whole thing, Tangerine Dream’s approach feels direct and even forceful.
The album concludes with its climax, the 15-minute “Raum.” It builds intensity for its first nine minutes before breaking down to a somber and sparse drone. It picks itself up again, builds to a short climax, then flares out as the violin sways over a bed of fading white noise. Not a minute of its running time is wasted.
So here we are. Tangerine Dream still has it. They’ve done a victory lap without lapsing into nostalgia (well, not to a detrimental extent), and they’ve proven why they’re such legends. The two longform tracks alone are more than worth the price of admission.
You can find it on their Bandcamp page here.