Edgar Froese
Aqua

THE REVIEW

During the phase of growing success for the group he founded, Tangerine Dream, Edgar Froese managed to find the flair and creativity to create a handful of solo albums: "Aqua" is the first, released in June 1974, recorded a few months earlier and therefore contemporary with "Phaedra", the album that established the German trio on the European electronic music scene. But this work retains elements of originality and does not constitute a redundant duplicate compared to the source group.

The album opens with the lapping of the waters: it is the title track "Aqua", a long piece, 17 minutes, which, however, does not limit itself to mere effects. Sharp sound impulses run through the entire track, supported by a suggestive backdrop entrusted to the keyboards. A static, almost motionless music, icy like the cover image. "Panorphelia", the next track, is shorter and livelier, more animated, a kind of continuo created by a synth constitutes the base upon which the melodic lines of Froese's solos hover.

In the original edition, the liner notes advised to listen to side 2 of the vinyl with headphones, "to fully appreciate the revolutionary Artificial Head System", a recording technique that aimed to reproduce a three-dimensional effect: it was perceptible with headphones but not with speakers, and so the experiment was not repeated. In the 14 minutes of "NGC 891", indeed, you can hear the noise of passing airplanes, which then gives way to a sequencer still technically raw with a long solo rising over it; his companion in many adventures, Chris Franke, is co-author of the track here. Concluding is the short "Upland", with the relaxing sounds of the organ, albeit with an electronic bubbling stirring in the background.

These were adventurous years when this album was made: the technological progress represented by the advent of sequencers and modular synths made it possible, in the most creative minds, for a new musical style to emerge. But "Aqua" was not just art: it served Edgar Froese to reinvest the earnings into the technical development of Tangerine Dream’s instrumentation. Art and technique: sometimes, even in facts, they are the same word.