Intuitive Music

Tangerine Dream

Tangerine Dream is one of the pioneering bands from the 70’s electronic music. The band was originally formed in Berlin in September 1967 by guitarist Edgar Froese with a group of students from Berlin’s Academy of Arts that featured Kurt Herkenberg (bass), Volker Hombach (violin, saxophone), Lanse Hapshash (drums) and Charly Prince (vocals).

The first version of Tangerine Dream was originally an electro acoustic group involved in the emerging experimental-definition”>experimental and new cultural scene of the city, being all of them involved in other artistic activities. The band, which was well known in the experimental art scene, used to play at student parties, galleries and art happenings for various national and numerous international artists such as Joseph Beuys, John Cage and Bernhard Hoeke. For a while, Froese was even tempted to play cover songs from the Doors.

Tangerine Dream played their debut concert of “‘Underground Music’ in January 1968, in the refectory of the Technical University of Berlin. In September 1968, Tangerine Dream played at the “Germany Awakes” festival along with Amon Duul and Guru Guru. That same year the band finally split up and, during the following four months, Edgar Froese played with more than 16 different musicians, including drummers Paul Wheeler from Liverpool, Sven Ake Johnson from Sweden and Al Akhbar from Ghana, bass player Steve Leuwen from Holland and sax player Nick Turner, later from Hawkwind. During this period, Froese wrote his first soundtrack work for the German director, Jurgen Polland’s movie “Never shoot the Bathroom Man”.

Tangerine Dream

In the Autumn of 1969, Edgar Froese met the young drummer Klaus Schulze from the band Psy-Free and invited him to join the band. A month later, Froese contacted Conrad Schnitzler at an exhibition of Joseph Beuys in Berlin and invited him to do a recording session with them playing cello and “a cash register”. Schnitzler was a performance artist, a pupil of the artist Beuys, who had confounded the Zodiak Club in 1968 where Tangerine Dream had a residency playing 6 hours per night. The session was recorded in October 1969 at the Mixed Media Studio, which was located in an old factory in West Berlin.

Influenced by the avant-garde works of John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen, Tangerine Dream recorded their debut album “Electronic Meditation”, which is considered one of the most advanced experimental works in the history of modern music. One of the peculiarities of this 100% improvised masterwork is that the band didn’t use electronic devices such as synthesizers at the time but conventional rock instruments. The trio also used different sound techniques, like sampling smashed glasses, cash register, or tape editing techniques and the only electronic instrument used in the recording was a Farfisa organ. The recordings were supported by the musicians Jimmy Jackson (organ) and Thomas Keyserling (flute), whom were not credited in the album. The album was released on the new krautrock label Ohr Records, started by Rolf-Ulrich Kaiser. Edgar Frose remembers about it: “I had to sell the two guitars I came with in order to buy my train ticket to get back. And when I got back to Berlin, totally burned out and penniless, I found a letter in my box saying, ‘We listened to your tape and it sounds great, we want to sign you’! I thought, What tape? Who wants to sign us? I rang them back and it turned out to be Ohr, the record company which had just been set up and was looking for unusual musicians. I said, ‘Here I am, take it! What will you pay?’ They gave me a thousand Deutchmarks, which at that time was more than I could expect. The tape became Electronic Meditation.” (Mojo, April 1997)

In 1970, Klaus Schulze got married and shortly later, he quit the band to join the krautrock band Ash Ra Tempel. Schulze was replaced by 17 year old drummer Chris Franke, who had built a studio together with Swiss avant-garde musician and composer Thomas Kessler in a music school in Berlin. Franke seemed the perfect option since he was also influenced by John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen, as well as Salvatore Dali’s surrealism. The new Trio was completed with the organist Steve Schroyder to played several gigs and TV appearances, including a TV-concert in Kapfenberg, Austria, for six pinball machines, guitar, cello and drums, which was very controversial. At this stage, the band released their first single “Ultima Thule”, released in 1971 on the Ohr label.

Due to Conrad Schnitzler’s interest in only happening performances, he quit the band to start a solo career. He was replaced by the organist Steve Schroyder for the recording of the second Tangerine Dream’s album “Alpha Centauri” (1971) which, influenced by the works by the electronic composer Gyoergy Ligeti, was one of the first works of electronic space rock music. “Alpha Centauri” was voted as the “LP of the Year” in the polls of ‘Sounds’ magazine in 1972. At this stage, the band started to introduce the term “cosmos” in their works and Ohr records used it the label “Cosmiche Musik” (Cosmic Music) for it’s later releases. Despite of the improvement in the sound of the band, Steve Schroyder was forced to leave the band due to an increasing drug consumption. Later, after a period of drug rehab, he would play again with the band in 1972 for the album “Zeit” in which Florian Frickle from Popol Vuh collaborated on Moog synthesizer.

Tangerine Dream

In 1973, a young organist from a band called Burning Touch called Peter Baumann showed up in Tangerine Dream’s rehearsal room in Berlin. After a 20 minutes improvisation in which they checked his natural talent to create new sounds on his Farfisa organ with reverb effects, he immediately joined the band. At the time, Chris Franke had bought a huge Moog modular system from The Rolling Stones that the British pop band found too complicated to use. Edgar Froese remembers this particular chapter: “Mick Jagger had to sell a devilish thing which brought him no satisfaction: a Moog Synthesizer. Peter Meisel, with whom we were before court, bought this monster from the Stones’ management, a heap of cables and scrap iron. No-one knew how to use the thing. But Chris had a soft spot for it. When the first sounds emerged, we went crazy. Meisel said: “Can we produce hits with this thing?” and we said: “No, you sell it to us”. Thus we got hold of our first Moog.” (Rolling Stone, 1996) Edgar also told once to Musik Express magazine: “When we bought this first synth, we first of all had to learn how to decode the technical terms, there was no translation/instruction manual, nothing at all”.

Chris Franke’s adittion to the band marked the beginning of a series of records that drew the guidelines of the electronic space music in the 70’s. In 1974, “Phaedra” revolutionized the world of popular music, which could be considered the birth of space rock music. The album was released worldwide under a new band’s contract with Virgin Records signed after founder Richard Brandson heard the band through John Peel’s radio show. It was recorded in just three weeks, and reached number 15 of the British Top 20 albums staying on the chart for 15 weeks, which meant an unprecedented success in the history of electronic music. Recorded at the Mannor studios in Oxfordshire, the album featured an arsenal of instruments including bass, organ, flute, VCS 3 synthesizer, Mellotron, electric piano, and for the very first time Chris Franke’s modular system. During this period the band released some of the most legendary electronic albums from the 70’s, including “Rubicon” (1975), “Ricochet” (1975) recorded live during the band’s 1975 European tour, and “Stratosfear” (1976). These four albums represent the space electronic classic era of the band that culminated with the performance of the band on December 13th 1974, in the Gothic Cathedral of Rheims for an audience of 6,000 people. A year later they repeated the experience at Coventry Cathedral, York Minister, Liverpool Cathedral.

In 1975, Peter Bauhman, just before the start of the band’s Australian tour, left the band and apparently he just disappeared overnight to embark on a trip to Asia by car. He was replaced eventually by Michael Hoenig. In 1976, Christopher Franke built his own recording studio, which was placed in what originally used to be a ballroom in 1902, and later a cinema, a discotheque and a warehouse. The first album produced in the new studio was “Stratosfear”. One year later, Peter Bauhman definitively quit the band, after more than six years of artistic differences and stating to the media: “On the one hand it is almost impossible that each group member develops in the same way for six years. On the other hand everyone is an egomaniac to the extent that he would like to carry out his own ideas.” Bauhman started a solo career as a musician and he produced and built his own studio in Berlin and later moved to New York.

After Bauhman’s departure the sax player and vocalist Steve Jolliffe and drummer Klaus Krueger joined the band. Krueger was one of the pioneers in the use of polyester drums and he gave a new sound to Tangerine Dream’s sound. Despite of this, the new Tangerine Dream’s album “Cyclone”, which was described by the press as “Tangerine Dream meets krautrock“, was not very well received due to the incorporation of Steve Jolliffe’s vocals which provoked his departure in 1978, though he still collaborated as a session musician in the following “Ages” album.

Tangerine Dream

After the album, Klaus Krueger joined Iggy Pop’s ban and at the end of 1979 Edgar Froese met the keyboardist Johannes Schmoelling when he was attending the performance of the play “Death, Destruction and Detroit” at the Schaubühne in Berlin, produced by Schmoeling. Three months later, Johannes Schmoelling joined Tangerine Dream to play the first live concert behind in East Berlin on 31st January 1980, which was one of the first Western acts to cross the Iron Curtain. In 1983, Tangerine Dream performed another memorable concert on the 10th of December 1983 at the Warsaw Ice stadium in Poland, where they played under a temperature of minus 5 degrees Celsius in woollen gloves with cut-off fingertips in order to feel the keys. There were several power cuts and the instruments often failed while the roadies ran around with cans filled with hot water to warm up the musicians hands. On top of it, a 2 metre layer of snow covered the glass roof with the risk of collapsing. This concert was released one year later on the double live album “Poland”. This Tangerine Dream’s lineup featuring Froese, Frank and Schmoelling lasted for five years and it’s told to be the most productive period of the band, which used to work for 16 hours a day. During these years, the band produced several studio albums, including “Le Parc” (1985) and “Dream Sequence” (1985).

In 1986, Johannes Schmoelling had an issue with the Austrian military after they wanted to draft him into mandatory service. After his fascination with the American way of life, he decided to quit the band and exile to Los Angeles, USA, where he started a career as a soundtrack composer. He has also released the solo works “Wuivend Riet” (1986), “The Zoo Of Tranquility” (1988), “White Out” (1990), “Lieder Ohne Worte - Songs No Words” (1995), “White Out” (2000) and “Recycle Or Die” (2003).

Johannes Schmoelling was replaced by 21 year old keyboard player called Paul Haslinger, who was involved into the jazz club scene in Vienna and had played with the bands Hypersax, Mo, and Eela Craig. He remained in the band until 1987, recording the studio albums “Underwater Sunlight” (1986) and “Tyger” (1987). At this stage, Chris Franke decided to quit Tangerine Dream to recover his private life from such extensive work. Frank went on holidays to Spain and then and moved to Los Angeles, USA. Frank told to the press: “A few weeks holiday wasn’t enough for me. After three weeks I had only relaxed physically to a certain extent. Psychologically I needed much longer. It was clear to me that this creative break had to last at least a year. I planned to take it during the period which one normally needs in order to obtain a work permit in America. I planned my solo career.”

Tangerine Dream

After this hiatus, Franke concentrated on his career as soundtrack and TV music producer. In 1991, he released his first solo album “Pacific Coast Highway” and founded the Berlin Symphonic Film Orchestra. He also opened a new studio in Hollywood. In 1993, Chris Franke founded his own record label “Sonic Images Records”, where he has released numerous studio recordings and soundtracks including “Universal Soldier”, the TV Sci-Fi series “Babylon 5″.

In 1988, and coinciding with the start of Peter Baumann’s new record label, Private Music, Tangerine Dream joined the keyboardist occasionally to record the album “Optical Race”, which was released in the new born label. Apart from this eventual collaboration Tangerine Dream carried on consisting now on the duo formed by Edgar Froese and Paul Haslinger and, in 1988, keyboardist Ralf Wadephul joined the duo to record the album “Lily on the Beach” (1989), which featured Edgar Froese’s son appearance for the first time and marked the beginning of a longer relationship with acoustic wind instruments. The new Tangerine Dream combination featuring Ralf Wadephul didn’t match as expected and he left after a USA tour to work as a recording engineer in Berlin.

In 1990, Linda Spa, a saxophonist and pianist who was financing her studies at the Vienna Musical Academy by working as a model, joined Tangerine Dream. The new lineup lasted for half a decade, until Edgar Froese’s son Jerome Froese joined the band to record the album “Melrose” (1990). Both father and son claim that the secret of their good relationship relays on one basic principle: “when it comes to musical opinions, family does not matter.” Jerome Froese also uses the pseudonym “TDJ Rome” for DJ’ing and producing drum ‘n’ bass on his own sub-label Ground Liftaz.

In 1990, “Paul Haslinger left the band to work as a solo artist and soundtrack composer for films and TV series. In 1992, Edgar Froese started the label TD Records and the band remained as the duo formed by Edgar and Jerome Froese, who have released the studio albums “Rockoon (1993), “220 Volt” (1993), “Turn Of Tides” (1994), “Tyranny Of The Beauty” (1995), “Dream Mixes” (1995), “Ambient Monkeys” (1998), “Quinoa Extended” (1998), “Mars Polaris” (1999), “The Seven Letters from Tibet” (2000), “Inferno” (2002) and “Purgatorio” (2004).

In 1997, The Orb remixed the track “Towards The Evening Star” from the “Goblins Club” album, which was released on a CD single containing the original track as well as the “Madarine Cream Mix”. Edgar and Jerome Froese were however disappointed with the result for the lack of resemblance to Tangerine Dream’s music and they gave their approval for the release of a club mix but forbade the release of the radio edits.

Tangerine Dream has also released more than 20 live records throughout it’s career, including “Encore” (1977), “Logos” (1983), “Live Miles” (1988), “220 Volt Live ” (1993), “Soundmill Navigator” (2000) and “Rockface” (2004). Tangerine Dream is also known for the numerous movie soundtracks that they have produced throughout their career, which have been released in several albums including “Sorcerer” (1975), “Thief” (1982), “Wavelength” (1983), “Risky Business” (1983), “Firestarter” (1984), “Flashpoint” (1984), “Heartbreakers” (1984), “Legend” (1985) featuring Jon Anderson’s vocal collaboration, “Shy People” (1985), “Near Dark” (1987), “Three O´Clock High” (1987), “Canyon Dreams” (1988), “Dead Solid Perfect” (1988), “Miracle Mile” (1989), “Destination Berlin” (1990), “Catch Me If You Can” (1994), “Oasis” (1998), “Transsiberia” (1998), “What a Blast!” (1999), “Great Wall of China” (1999) and “Mota Atma” (2003).