Tangerine Dream
Zeit

"Zeit" - Tangerine Dream

Recording Year - 1972

Line up:

Edgar Froese (sound generator, gliss guitar)
Peter Baumann (keyboards, VCS3, vibraphone)
Christopher Franke (keyboards, VCS3)

Introduction

The year was '72 and in Germany the kraut movement had already taken root; it was just waiting to fully blossom. Some of the greatest masterpieces were born the previous year
(Faust, the self-titled, "Tago Mago" by Can and many others), Neu! would explode with "Hallogallo" shortly after.
The land of sacred music, semi-hidden to most of the rock world, had already given a lot, a tremendous amount; yet something was missing.

Tangerine Dream was founded in 1967 by Edgar Froese, a pioneer in electronic music, in Berlin. Their first two albums ("Electronic Meditation" and "Alpha Centauri," released in 1970 and 1971 respectively) were heavily influenced by English psychedelia,
with plenty of space for stellar jams and space travel atmospheres. Electronic music for the Tangerine Dream, if we can put it that way, was truly born in "Alpha Centauri"; just listen to the title track. The early Tangerine Dream also had the great and unique Klaus Schulze in their lineup, which had a significant impact on their music. But all these elements are put in the background in Zeit.

Sides A-B

1/ "Birth Of Liquid Plejades" - 19:54
2/ "Nebolous Dawn" - 17:56

The album opens with the sparse notes of the Quartetto Cologne, gloomy cellos predicting
atmospheres that suck thoughts from the brain. An hypnotic, shiver-inducing start. Thus begins the first of the four majestic suites of "Zeit."

Why Zeit? Zeit, the word which means time in German. Indeed - this music is something to be physically touched, immobile yet perfectly liquid, tangible, free from any musical metric, tense but above all hypnotic. Hypnotic.
Time doesn't matter here; there is only the listener, the music (which in this case is synonymous with life, almost breathable), and the entire chariot of Jupiter of emotions it can evoke.
Nothing else. Seconds slip by unnoticed by anyone. Time flees, but by antithesis, it also stands still. Eternal. Here are the two key adjectives for an album like Zeit - Hypnotic and eternal.

Then, the sunset.

The clouds surrounding the red sphere; and the eclipse drawing ever closer. The watery sound of the VCS3 in "Nebolous Dawn", making its way through the dead waves of maximized keyboards, an electronic joy (perhaps something more) that extends infinitely through the recesses of the human mind. Like some kind of probe sent into the Mariana Trench, in search of who knows what secret.
Music almost impossible to describe in words, but a gateway to other worlds, to be listened to in the dark, when the sunset has already taken place.

Sides C-D

3/ "Origin Of Supernatural Probabilities" - 19:34
4/ "Zeit" - 16:58

In the background, something trying to emulate the ethereal sound of the wind. And overwhelming it all, a few dark, dreadful notes, illusions of peace that in reality are just an extension of a mental coma that has now set up home in the hyper-active brain of the listener. Origins of supernatural probabilities; how can such music be a journey into ourselves, how can such a wall of sound shatter our gentle thoughts doomed to die eventually, as ephemeral as the rest of the planet?

"Zeit" in my opinion represents the darkest peak of Tangerine Dream, the yet unexplored and completely unraveled pinnacle of their discography. It can toss all your five senses onto Mars.

The cover, to conclude, represents the content of the album perfectly. The sun, knowledge, where reason and human thought reign; everything is eclipsed, and the subconscious comes into action, and our identity becomes elusive, and finally, most importantly, one gets lost in the music, dreaming.


PS: I was not satisfied with the review already present. That's why I decided to write another one.

Yours faithfully,
Cimbarello