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Rating: Ah, the first review! After much listening, I have decided to write my first lines to try to convey what I hear and the emotions I feel. I must state that I will only discuss albums not yet reviewed on this site, with rare exceptions. To talk about the album under consideration, I will indulge in a brief introduction to the immediately preceding albums to help those unfamiliar to understand what we are discussing.
In 1972, Tangerine Dream released Zeit. A monumental album both for the quantity and the revolution of music present within. It marks a step that brings Tangerine Dream closer to the avant-garde music of the second half of the twentieth century, a step that aligns them with various electronic pioneers of the 60s-70s (David Tudor, Morton Subotnick, Klaus Schulze, and others) not so much for the similarity of the proposed music but for the desire to use new technologies to create something new. In this release, the group decides to abandon conventional harmonic and melodic structures in favor of music without precise patterns, which does not lead to easy emotions but floats in space and time, sculpting the intimacy of man. The proposal is difficult for the rock public to understand, so much so that, already from the subsequent album Atem, the sound shifts towards slightly less challenging tones. The title track represents, in my opinion, the sum of Tangerine art: the crescendo of mellotron and percussion in the first six minutes and the static nature of the second part are the apex of the group's proposed music, which, once landed at Virgin, will veer towards more melodic sounds.
In the same years, Tangerine Dream demonstrates creative flair not only in the studio but also on stage. In fact, although the first official live album is Encore, released in 1977, recordings made by fans during the tours of 72, 73, 74, 75, and beyond, have been collected, remastered, and released in a series of "fan releases" under the names Tangerine Tree and Tangerine Leaves. The audio quality of these releases is obviously not at the level of official albums as the recording equipment used was not professional. The qualitative level varies greatly from volume to volume depending on the source and, in general, the Tangerine Tree series collects recordings of better quality compared to Tangerine Leaves.
The most interesting are those that include the tours conducted before 1976. In the early years' live performances, the three propose hours of completely improvised electronic music in which the listener's role is put in the foreground. Froese does not want to repeat something already written at each performance, he wants to go beyond, he wants to overcome the limit between performer and listener. The outcome of the musical experience will be positive not only due to the technical and creative skill of the artist but also for the performer’s ability to translate what is assimilated for the first time into emotions.
On October 10, 1974, Froese, Baumann, and Franke offered 43 minutes of metaphysical, challenging music, reminiscent of the stasis of Zeit but rendered by the mellotron of Atem. 43 minutes in which the distressing mellotron sketches melodic lines that are soon abandoned, accompanied by synth gurgles that seem to be born and die in the void that generated them. There are small instrumental fills but they too are fleeting, leaving us as soon as we try to follow them, they do not want to be remembered, they do not want to emerge from the monotonous flow of the work. It is music that cannot be described in words because it flows without exalting, without impressing firmly in the listener's memory, and can only be enjoyed if faced with the right attention. To love Tangerine's early works one must have the ability to appreciate the small things. The tiniest variations that emerge from the background monolith become disturbances that only the finest ear can recognize and elevate as the driving force to continue and make the listening pleasurable.
An album that all lovers of pre-Phaedra Tangerine will appreciate and also an excellent starting point for exploring these fan-curated releases. This volume, in fact, undoubtedly has the best audio quality (of the '74 tour) and is the last one where the sequencer is not yet present, an instrument that will characterize all their subsequent works. The album was also officially released, along with other lives, in the collection "Bootleg Box Set Vol.1". I will take the trouble to review other volumes of this series (those I find particularly important), but in the meantime, I leave you with the task of enjoying this one, happy listening!
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