Musicians - Tangerine Dream

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	Musicians - Tangerine Dream

Tangerine Dream is a German electronic music group founded in 1967 by Edgar Froese. The band has undergone several personnel changes over the years, with Froese the only continuous member. Drummer and composer Klaus Schulze was a member of an early lineup, but the most stable version of the group during their influential mid-1970s period was as a keyboard trio with Froese, Christopher Franke, and Peter Baumann. Early in the 1980s, Johannes Schmoelling replaced Baumann, and this lineup, too, was stable and extremely productive.

Tangerine Dream's early "Pink Years" albums had a pivotal role in the development of Krautrock. Their "Virgin Years" and later albums became a defining influence in New Age Music.

Although the group has released numerous studio and live recordings, a substantial number of their fans were introduced to Tangerine Dream by their film soundtracks, which numbered nearly thirty and included Sorceror, Thief, Risky Business, Firestarter, Legend, and Miracle Mile.

History

Edgar Froese arrived in West Berlin in the mid-1960s to study art. He worked as a sculptor and studied under Salvador Dalí, among others. His first band, the R&B-styled The Ones, was gradually dismantled after releasing only one single, and Froese turned to experimentation, playing minor gigs with a variety of musicians. Most of these gigs were in the famous Zodiac nightclub, although Froese's band was also invited to play for his former teacher Dalí. Music was mixed with literature, painting, early forms of multimedia, and more. Only the most outlandish ideas attracted any attention, and Froese summed up this attitude with the phrase: "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.

Froese was fascinated by technology and skilled in using it to create music. He built 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 Froese quickly adopted.

Most notable of Froese's collaborations was his partnership with Christopher Franke. Franke joined Tangerine Dream in 1970 from the group Agitation Free to replace Klaus Schulze as the drummer, and eventually he became Tangerine Dream's sequencer guru and was responsible for the pulsing rhythmic synthesizer lines that came to define the band's music. Franke left Tangerine Dream due to creative differences with Froese nearly two decades later in 1987; many fans consider this to be the de facto breakup of the band.

Other long-term members of the group included Peter Baumann (1972-1977), who later went on to found the New Age label Private Music, to which the band was signed from 1988 to 1991; Johannes Schmoelling (1980-1985); Paul Haslinger (1986-1990); and, most recently (1990 onwards), Froese's son Jerome. Many fans of the band consider the addition of Jerome to be an abject disaster, and the band's popularity has declined markedly since.

A number of other musicians were also part of Tangerine Dream for shorter periods of time; these include Michael Hoenig (who replaced Baumann for a 1975 Australian tour and London concert, included on Bootleg Box Set Vol. 1), Steve Joliffe (flute and vocals on Cyclone and the following tour), Ralf Wadephul (who is credited for one track on Optical Race and toured with the band in support of this album), and, most recently, saxophonist Linda Spa.

The first Tangerine Dream album, Electronic Meditation, was a tape-collage piece, using the technology of the time rather than the synthesized music they later became famous for, and was a collaboration between Froese, Klaus Schulze, and Conrad Schnitzler. Electronic Meditation was published by Ohr in 1970, and began the period known as the Pink Years (the Ohr logo was a pink ear). Beginning with their second album, Alpha Centauri, the group tended to be a duo or trio of electronic instruments augmented by Froese's guitar, Franke's drums, and sometimes assorted guest musicians. They were particularly heavy users of the Mellotron during this period. Most albums were purely instrumental—two albums that prominently featured lyrics, Cyclone (1978) and Tyger (1987) (the latter featuring poems by William Blake recited over music) were met with disapproval from the fans. While there have occasionally been a few vocals on the band's other releases, such as the track "Kiew Mission" from 1981's Exit, the group only recently returned to featuring vocals in a (currently unfinished) musical trilogy based on Dante's The Divine Comedy.

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Musicians - Tangerine Dream

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