by Mott the Dog
re-mastered By Ella Crew
5 Stars *****
All of you who like “New Age Music”, “Electronic
Music”, “World Music’’, or even “Techno” owe a huge debt of
gratitude to this German rock band, who along with their fellow countrymen
‘Kraftwerk’ pioneered a whole new age of musical genres.
Originally a straight ahead Rock band the founding
members of Tangerine Dream soon discovered the many amazing sounds they
could get out of their instruments, and with the technology developing
around them they were riding the crest of a new and exciting musical wave.
‘Force Majeure’ was their big breakthrough album in
1979, their thirteenth album altogether, and second for Richard
Branson’s Virgin Record label. The Virgin team had already had enormous
success by taking a chance and releasing Michael Oldfield’s ‘Tubular
Bells’ to Platinum sales worldwide, after all the major labels would not
touch it. So Virgin and Tangerine Dream made very suitable partners. The
first album released on Virgin had been the controversial ‘Cyclone’
album, when the band had played more like a traditional rock band,
including vocals, whilst forsaking some of the sweeping synthesizers and
ambient sounds, much to the despair of their fans.
But it only made for a quick re-think and vocalist
Steve Joliffe had left the band by the time they went back into the
studio. The spacey Tangerine Dream sound was back, but better than ever,
with even more adventurous effects and more structure to the songs. If
songs is what you call these pieces of music. The shortest piece clocks in
at seven minutes and twenty one seconds, while the opening title track is
a massive eighteen and a half minutes. It opens the album in grand style,
keyboards come sweeping in after the opening theme, building to a crashing
climax with all instruments joining in one by one, layer upon layer,
before settling down when the opening theme is reintroduced on acoustic
guitar and the music takes of again at a more manageable pace.
A grand piano takes you off on one of Tangerine’s
musical journeys into the unknown. Soon Edgar Froese’s electric guitar
comes into duel with the piano before jumping off at a different tangent,
before being brought back into the song by the piano, allowing the
keyboards to make themselves heard. So at ten minutes along you are
finally into the real meat of the music. As the music takes a second to
pause at the eleven minute mark, a ghost train huffs and puffs its way
across your speakers, taking you into a far more sinister area of the
Tangerine Dream mind, where the sounds of the mellotron, VCS3, organ,
e-piano, synthesizers, and flute leave you with a feeling of being
watched, whilst in the dark the sounds, emanating from the band, whisk
from speaker to speaker.
However, just before it gets too weird the keyboards
come back in with the main theme of the song and before you know it, you
are back in the musical sunshine, and all of the loose ends of the
instruments tie together to bring the music to a gloriously satisfying
conclusion.
‘Cloudburst Flight’, although the shortest piece in
this collection, has the most infectious main riff with three minutes of
pure genius from Edgar Foese on the six-string. He brings the song to a
thundering finale with a guitar solo that has only ever been equalled by
David Gilmour on the corresponding solo to the end of ‘Pink Floyd’s
“Comfortably Numb”. (Have a listen - it really is that good.)
‘Thru Metamorphic Rock’ gives you an insight into
the direction in which Tangerine Dream were going in the future. For over
fourteen minutes you are hit by a repetitive beat played out on both
acoustic and electronic drums, whilst all the time, like two musical
wizards, Froese and Franke cast musical spells to drag you deeper into
their web. As the rhythms drive into your mind in almost a hypnotic manor,
it leaves you wanting more once it finishes.
There are now more than fifty Tangerine albums to
choose from, and that is not counting the hoards of live albums and
compilations. However, if you fancy a musical change or a step into
another world, ‘Force Majeure’ is as good a place to start as any.
If on first listening any of the themes seem familiar,
this is probably because all of them were used in the first movie to star
Tom Cruise, ‘Risky Business’. The fantasy scene on the train being
particularly memorable. This movie helped to push both Tom Cruise and
Tangerine Dream from the second division into the major league.
These days there is still a band called Tangerine Dream
with guitarist Edgar Froese at the helm, but these days with a much more
guitar based sound. Gad Zooks! The last Tangerine Dream Live album even
had a sonic version of Hendrix’s ‘Purple Haze’ on it. Meanwhile his
old partner Chris Franke went on to have a very successful career as a
solo artist, keeping the more traditional Tangerine Dream sound alive.
Whichever way these two very talented artists are heading, they are well
worth your attention.
Although all the music on ‘Force Majeure’ is quite
magnificent, my one adverse comment would be that the whole thing clocks
in at under forty minutes. In this day and age of CDs is this really value
for money to pay? Could not the record label have found some out-takes,
live recordings, or the pieces from the Risky Business Soundtrack, to have
given the paying punter more value for his hard earned buck? But a minor
quibble when the standard of what you get is so good. Perhaps it’s a
case of “feel the quality not the width”.
Musicians
Edgar Froese - Guitar and Keyboards
Chris Franke - Guitar and Keyboards
with some help from Klaus Krieger on the Acoustic Drums
and Edvard Meyer on the Cello.
Songs
Force Majeure
Cloudburst Flight
Thru Metamorphic Rock
To contact Mott the Dog email: [email protected]
Book Review: Heritage 1
Mott’s CD review: