Peter Baumann
Romance 76

Tangerine Dream, year 1976. Froese feels the need for change. He doesn't know how, he doesn't know where to, but he knows that their music must change to avoid stagnation, to avoid continually repeating itself. The path they take is perhaps the simplest one: from the avant-garde sounds of the early years, the trio opts to pursue a decidedly more melodic and acoustic route, now employing traditional instruments such as piano, guitar, and harmonica. A regression towards simpler and more immediate forms, more easily accessible, but which in the young landscape of electronic music at the time could represent a turning point with creative and new outcomes. More or less pop music played with electronic timbres, in fact, had so far seen few exponents (Kraftwerk, the Cluster of Zuckerzeit, Walter Carlos's synth transpositions), and the shift by Tangerine in '76, in my opinion, should not necessarily be seen as a trivial choice.

The first fruit of this new Tangerine path is Stratosfear, a definitely multifaceted album that offers, along with the usual meditative moments (to be fair, few), easily recognizable melodic themes and well-defined rhythmic structures. Overall, an album I consider slightly inferior to the previous ones but with a certain artistic and emotional impact. The second product of this new guise is not the live Encore (as many of you might think), but rather the first solo work by Peter Baumann, "Romance 76".

The album can ideally be described by dividing it into two parts. The first three songs reflect the style of Stratosfear: an aggressive sequencer ready to support the rhythm section and magnificent synths that draw accompaniment and melodic lines destined to reach the emotional peak in Bicentennial Presentation, a song that in the opinion of the writer reaches greater heights than Stratosfear . The second part of the album consists of the splendid suite, divided into three parts, for choir, string section, and electronic instruments: Meadow of Infinity. Here the sound becomes more experimental, obsessive, and evolves minute by minute until it culminates in the final section that partially leaves behind the asperities of the previous two parts. A crescendo of strings accompanies the synth which maneuvers through phrases that are short and fleeting butsufficiently captivating to remain etched in the mind and evoke that classic sense of emptiness and amazement that accompanies the end of an album, when it particularly strikes us.

An album highly recommended, then, far superior to Froese's works (at least those after Epsilon) and one that pushes a bit further than Stratosfear. For all fans of the Tangerine Dream period 76'-77', the only thing left is to obtain this little gem to discover its beauty or, at the very least, to understand how important Peter Baumann's contribution has been to the development of Tangerine music.

Rating out of ten: 8