Tangerine Dream
Exit

Uncle's heart... faced with the usual "no, look, it's too much, you have to see it, no uncle, you can't stop yourself" I already know that hours and hours of watching TV series episodes with comments, three-seasons-in-ten-seconds summaries, and debates on freeze-frames await me, especially during my holidays. I must admit: sometimes they aren't that bad, I even confess that for "Dark" I had to secretly pull out my handkerchief while simultaneously trying to swallow a difficult lump in my throat.
And speaking of Germans: I don't know how to express how excited I felt when in the sixth episode of "Stranger Things" the subdued and relentless progress of "Exit" appeared, the track that gives the name to the Tangerine Dream album from 1981, the second studio album of the Franke - Froese - Schmoelling formation.
Just observing how wonderfully that sound fitted those images, and how well it blended into a deliberately vintage yet contemporary and captivating soundtrack, I realized how much I like and am satisfied with "Exit." Something I didn't take for granted: at first listen, the work seemed anomalous, somewhat dry, lacking those long journeys contained in previous (and even subsequent) albums, far from the cosmic dramas of "Zeit," the hypnotic sequencers of "Rubycon," but also from the precious balance between futurism, progressive, and world music of "Hyperborea."
In reality, it is precisely this distance that makes the great effectiveness of "Exit" even more evident as an extraordinary starting point for a series of paths in 80s electronic music. "Choronzon," for example, is already there waiting to accompany a cop show among fast cars, skyscrapers, and beaches - the sequencer phrasing capable of making heads spin, a tight rhythm based on programmed percussion, full-handed chords, and melodies to whistle. I can already see myself with mirrored sunglasses and a Hawaiian shirt (and a mullet, perhaps, if I could still count on a mane). And how engaging is the robotic dance of "Network 23," ready to give the impression of wind in the hair during a convertible ride down a Los Angeles boulevard, enough to make us forget the Berlin origins of the group.
One can also find themselves in more sci-fi, mysterious, and unsettling realms, particularly in "Remote Viewing" and its exquisitely abstract introduction, capable of then evolving into the most Tangerinian clock-ticking suspense, and in the aforementioned "Exit," certainly the most meditative track of the collection.
It’s then an entire film that passes before the eyes in the moving plea for peace (here I have to trust the comments, as the half-spoken female text is in Russian) of Kiew Mission, a track that, placed at the beginning of the album, represents a true manifesto: the entire poetics of the band concentrates on a careful search for innovative and expressive sounds, melodies that are present but never fully prevailing, leaving space for layers upon layers of timbral and accent variations, in the best Tangerine Dream style.
Suddenly, one realizes that from "Exit" an entire electronic catalog of the decade can be extracted: there is the sinister noise that opens Michael Jackson's "Beat It," sequences that will be extensively exploited by Italo Disco, the models for the music of half the American TV production of the '80s, and the quality of sound inventions that, although distinctly flavored with those times, retain their freshness intact. It is this point that needs to be emphasized: "Exit" is not liked for a nostalgia effect, but for its great coherence and creativity, for the will of an already established band to lay the foundations for a new sound.
And who knows if something from Tangerine Dream will come back to amaze me (and fill me with pride) even in the fourth, (over)announced season of "Stranger Things," which I hope they make before I get Alzheimer's.