Tangerine Dream
Atem

I still remember when I bought the vinyl of Atem by Tangerine Dream: at the time I was listening to garage-punk and psychedelia, and that record was a revelation for me. The seller of the small record store in Lodi, to introduce me to the music contained in the record, told me that "it was meditative." He wasn't completely wrong: perhaps Atem isn't as meditative as the previous Zeit, but it still contains some space music that managed to blow my mind. I had never heard anything like it in my life, and this record literally opened "the doors of the cosmos up there in Germany" for me.

Atem, released in the spring of 1973, was the fourth album by Tangerine Dream and the last in which they explored music in all directions. This is still an avant-garde music album where producer Dieter Dierks plays an important role. The title track is epic and majestic with its minimal electronica: the delirious percussive finale is disorienting. The second side begins with the magnificent 'Fauni Gena,' a genuine treasure trove of wonders where we can hear electronic noises and alien melodies while the mellotron and organ create an unreal and sci-fi setting that seems to come straight out of a science fiction movie. I believe that a lot of ambient music owes something to this track. The subsequent 'Circulation Of Events' instead projects us into an immobile, hypnotic, and minimal dimension, while the concluding 'Wahn' is something hard to describe: here, the influence of the great Karl Heinz Stockhausen is strongly noticeable. The initial voices are dark and disturbing, then the final drums evoke an alien ritual taking place on some planet belonging to another galaxy.

It was the legendary John Peel, a sort of iconic figure in alternative rock music in England (how can we not mention his mythical Peel Sessions!), who recognized the value of this album. He named it album of the year and effectively opened the doors of the cosmos to Tangerine Dream in the English market thanks to Richard Branson's Virgin. After Atem the group led by Edgar Froese would never be the same again, even though they would continue to release great music throughout the '70s.