Tangerine Dream
Alpha Centauri

Summer arrives and punctual as death, here come the annual summer hits... what will be this year's catchy tune for the beach? If you absolutely don't care about the lightness (better called mediocrity) that prevails, I dare recommend to everyone, yes everyone, the quintessential musical journey. This is the first album I owned in CD format after "The Final Cut" by Pink Floyd. I've listened to it thousands of times through thousands of moods, yet every time it leaves me suspended, with no anchor to hold onto, exhausted, dreamy, and content. I love it so madly that I even enjoy seeing the astonished faces of listeners not ready for such magnificence (hoping there's less and less people who haven't heard it!).

In January 1971, Tangerine Dream, orphaned of Klaus Shulze (not exactly a fool, mind you), changed recording studios by moving to the "Dierk Studios" of Dieter Dierk, the brilliant sound engineer for many upcoming krautrock groups. Froese and company began to experiment with the potential of the early rudimentary analog synths like the EMS, used in this album more for producing sound effects than actual parts of songs. Nonetheless, an essential album, everything (am I exaggerating?) started here, and despite the rather massive use of electronics, the music exudes soul, possessing a personality that is almost heartrending; no longer the noisy informalism of the previous "Electronic Meditations", but a decidedly evocative and dreamy sound. The central core of the extra-musical inspiration is indisputably the cosmos with its allure and mysteries, and more specifically, science fiction, a central element in all early '70s German electronics and in the band's subsequent career.

Only three songs that make up a single long suite, 40 minutes of traveling through space and time. Characteristics of this monolith (how else to call it??) include the textures of the distorted and filtered Hammond often similar to a church organ, unsettling synth effects (the EMS but also the VCS3) with strong echo, the melancholic phrases of Froese’s Les Paul, the quiet flute almost tinged with jazz, the tribal drums with cymbals that seem to explode in your face like meteors. Everything flows naturally within Alpha Centauri 22 minutes of pure cosmic delirium. The journey is about to end and the treated organ inseparably merges with otherworldly voices that seem to come from who knows where.

......now it's night......get in the car with the album, have someone accompany you if you wish, and reach a wide-open place. The sea, the plains, the top of a mountain, it doesn't matter. A place where your gaze can wander among the stars and the undefined lines that describe the sensible reality. Play. Listen.