Tangerine Dream
Ballads

Among the many ridiculous things I've reviewed on this site, I believe this one deserves a special (negative) place.

First of all for the name "Tangerine Dream" which to most evokes some respectable work from the late '70s (Zeit, Tangram...) and, secondly, for the incredible scam I experienced by purchasing this "special box" titled "Ballads" (with 4 CDs at a special price).

Music that is nothing short of embarrassing, played with pre-war synths in a mishmash of new age music so strange that it is hard to listen to. I made sure it was the historical Tangerine Dream and not some Cover Band (you see all sorts nowadays), but no... damn it: it's THEM!!

The pioneers of German kosmische musik, the inventors of a certain ethereal sound that discovered electronics, precursors of multimedia applied to live performances.

In short, these folks here (not some improvised people, I mean) are NOW playing boiled soups of sugary music that is unpresentable today due to how outdated and absolutely rhetorical it is: no remarkable arrangements, no sound exploration, no stylistic innovation, nothing at all that could be considered even slightly interesting. A tasteless stew of marches, ballads (exactly) and two-chord symphonies, with an ethereal and epic flavor, of disconcerting (and irritating) banality.

Worse than the worst of Enya or Kitaro, so to speak...

The question at this point is: VOTE for Tangerine Dream (the name, their past, etc.) or VOTE for this atrocious box set (complete with an introductory booklet in German/English) that not even any esoteric sect would adopt as the soundtrack for their psycho-astral sessions?

In short: I've decided to vote for the box set, because Tangerine Dream may have done praiseworthy things in the past... but when it's too much, it's too much.

Christ on a crutch: stick to some local festival, play your slops in some Renewed Cosmos Festival of Val Brembana or for some King Nude Festival but... avoid churning out record abominations like these 4. Out of respect for your past and for those who also believed in your music (centuries ago).

Truly unbearable. Better a Scanu or Arisa album, if I really have to... but only if really really.