Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
Part 1: 1967-1977
Exploration
Published in SOS December 1994
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October saw the release of a giant Tangerine Dream boxed set from
Virgin Records, 'Tangents 1973-1983'. In the first of this two-part
feature, MARK PRENDERGAST considers Tangerine Dream's
groundbreaking use of emergent synthesizer technology during
their first decade. This is the first article in a two-part series.
Read Part 2.
In December 1993, when Virgin approached me to work on their forthcoming Tangerine Dream boxed set, it
seemed like a thrilling but difficult task. Then, I knew only that the box set dealt with the Virgin years (1973-
1983), and did not even know which tracks the group would select for final inclusion. The story of Tangerine
Dream's long career involves over 40 album releases and continuous changes in personnel, played out against
a backdrop of three decades of massive advances in available music technology. Because of this last point, it
was important to show how such a progressive group as Tangerine Dream adapted as new equipment became
available. To help unravel this story, I interviewed members of Tangerine Dream in depth. Further research
produced a 74-page booklet for the boxed set, in which my purpose was to highlight the legacy of the group,
and to convey their pioneering attitude towards recording electronic music. In recent years, this attitude has
attracted great attention from those involved with modern electronic dance music, and consequently, like their
contemporaries Pink Floyd, Tangerine Dream have seen their sounds widely sampled for re-use in House
music.
During the course of my interviews with them, Edgar Froese and Christoph Franke came up with a great deal
of fascinating background to the recording of each album, which was a just credit to their dedication and
tenacity. Today, electronic equipment is pretty easy to use. You just buy it, study the manuals, and connect up
the leads. In Tangerine Dream's heyday, equipment was all about trial-and-error, trying to obtain certain
sounds from frankly unreliable machines. Today, 10 million album sales later, their story is still unique, for in
many ways, as the group's founder Edgar Froese says, the history of Tangerine Dream is the history of
modern electronic equipment.
But luck was on Tangerine Dream's side, as Ohr Records took up the option. However, before the album was
even released, Schulze quit during a European tour, and Froese found himself again fronting an unstable
outfit. It was at this point that Christoph Franke joined the group. Eight years younger than Froese, Franke had
impeccable credentials. He came from a family of musicians, and had won several brass competitions before
turning to percussion in the group Agitation Free, which he founded when only 13. Within two years he was
already working in his own electronic recording studio, having had his interest in electronic music encouraged
by his music teacher, Thomas Kessler. Franke subsequently went on to join the prestigious Les Percussions
de Strasbourg, which he now describes as "an avant-garde percussion thing, with a lot of Asian and Indian
influences, and a lot of contemporary jazz. I liked jazz, I liked rock, I liked Indian. I was pretty much open-
minded to everything I could hit. At the same time, though, I had the classical study -- I studied the trumpet, the
violin, the piano and composition, harmony and stuff. I met Edgar at the Berlin studio. He had just lost Klaus
and needed a drummer. He struck me as a serious thinker, into playing regular concerts. So we just
improvised, and liked each other's ideas. After a few concerts, I decided to stay. Then Conrad [Schnitzler] left,
we got Steve Schroeder in, and recorded Alpha Centauri".
Chris Franke has slightly different memories of the album: "We found an interesting studio around Cologne run
by Dieter Dierks, which the record company had recommended. It was 8-track, the latest thing then. Dierks
was into what we were doing, as an engineer. We had all kinds of organs, endorsement deals with Farfisa, and
also all these modules, tremolo things, ring modulators, all kinds of gates which opened and closed sounds,
oscillators, and, of course, all these echo machines. It took hours to set up 10 different modules, and they were
very unstable. The electrical impedances were also sometimes not compatible. Then I heard that EMS Putney
in London had developed a way for all these things to be put together in a compact way. I immediately called
them up, went over and got this box, called a synthesizer, which was all very new then. Alpha Centauri was a
transitional album, from Tangerine Dream being a very loud group to being a very quiet meditational group.
You see, I loved avant-garde music. I brought all my Stockhausen and Ligeti records to Edgar, and taught him
that there was more to music than Hendrix and Pink Floyd".
According to Franke, he brought Peter Baumann into the band because Steve Schroeder had become too
"drugged out of it" to play. Froese maintains he saw Baumann playing excellent keyboards in a group called
The Ants. Franke remembers that "when Peter joined, the group became more stabilised, and seriously started
working on keyboards and synthesizers. Peter had been in a band called Burning Touch at the American
school in Berlin. He played organ and was very into pop music. He spoke very good English, and was
interested in surrealism. So his way into the new music was through art, even though his father was a
composer".
The first thing that Froese, Franke, and Baumann (to this day the classic Tangerine Dream line-up) did was to
record a completely experimental album, with no recognisable beats or melodies -- Zeit. The equipment line-up
was simple: Franke on VCS3, cymbals and keyboards; Froese on glissando guitar and various noise
generators; and Baumann on VCS3, organ and vibraphone. The double album was all completed in 10 days in
May 1972. Froese recalls: "That's all includingmixing. We invited Florian Fricke (of Popol Vuh) to the sessions .
He owned the only big modular Moog synth in Germany, but we didn't know how to use it that well. So we were
forced into learning how the thing worked. Since we didn't want to use any rhythm on Zeit, we didn't have to
worry about sequencers". Chris Franke remembers Zeit as an album born of "dreams and meditation. After
three years of aggressive music derived from frustration with teachers, the classical system, guitar rock, and
every other political thing, we came into this new phase of exploring the finer things. Fricke's Moog on that
album was the key" (see 'The 800,000 Mark Synth' side panel).
By the beginning of 1973, the group had another weird album in the bag, Atem. Franke was still using the
VCS3, but as he says, "the significant thing was that we started to build up the rhythms again, which had
disappeared on Zeit. Another big change was the introduction of the Mellotron". Froese recalls: "Atem was
recorded in the same 8-track studio in Cologne as Zeit. We used the Mellotron for the first time, but since the
tape loops in it only played for seven seconds when you pressed a key, several compositions had to be fitted
to this playing technique. Looking back, the sound is horrible, the loops are in part irregular, hard to tune and
have hardly any high frequencies, since they play back at about 9kHz. One certainly has to listen to the album
with 'historical ears'! Christoph Franke played drums for the last time on that album, on the track 'Wahn'. The
whole production lasted 15 days, including mixing. Farfisa organs, guitar and two VCS3 synths were also
used".
With Baumann back in the group, the Green Desert tapes secured a five-year contract with Virgin, and Richard
Branson had the group come to England to work in The Manor, where Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells had been
so successfully recorded. Chris Franke used part of the Virgin advance to buy a Moog modular synth he'd
been practising on at the Hansa recording studios (see 'The 800,000 Mark Synth' side panel). "I bought it for a
mere $15,000, an incredibly low price." It made a difference, for the following album, Phaedra, was a triumph
of sequenced rhythm and electronic washes. The new LP flew up the charts on its release in February 1974,
and went gold in seven countries. Froese's memories of the recording session are still fascinating: "We started
in November 1973. Before, we had improvised, but now many things had to be structured, because of the
Moog with its driving bass notes. Tuning the instrument took several hours each day, because in those days
there were no presets or memory banks. By the 11th day, we only had six and a half minutes of music on tape.
Technically, everything went wrong -- the tape machine broke down, there were repeated mixing console
failures, and the speakers were damaged, because of the unusually low frequencies of the bass notes. After a
two-day break in the country, things improved. 'Mysterious Semblance' was recorded in one take on a double-
keyboarded Mellotron while my wife Monique turned the knobs on the phasing device. Even 'Phaedra' was
done in one go. Chris had pressed the button to start the bubbling bass note, but it wasn't right, so after a while
the bass drops out. Then he started tuning the bass note while he was running it, and all the time, the engineer
was recording. So what you hear today was in fact a rehearsal!"
While in England, Chris Franke was offered another cheap Moog synth, which had belonged to The Moody
Blues. Today, Franke laughs when he thinks about it. "They hated it because it was so unstable, its oscillators
kept drifting up and down. So, suddenly, I had two of these boxes, and was surrounded on-stage by an
electronic altar. The group were really boogieing with sequences and fat sounds... I was very happy at that
time."
RUBYCON
Most of the rest of 1974 was spent performing in strange locations, particularly European cathedrals. Back in
England, TD returned to The Manor in January 1975 to record Rubycon, possibly their finest achievement.
Choral and pastoral elements added to the impression that Froese, Franke, and Baumann had really absorbed
the innovations of Stockhausen and Ligeti decades before. On the equipment front, Franke added a modified
Elka organ, while Baumann introduced prepared piano and ARP synth. Not surprisingly, Rubycon charted
higher than Phaedra on its release three months later. Edgar Froese remembers the recording:
"Unlike Phaedra, there were no breaks in creative flow. The sequencers could now be technically better
equipped, although many of the technical alterations had to be custom-built. This was a very extensive
undertaking, and most of our Phaedra earnings went into new equipment. I had orchestral instruments
recorded by the BBC for my Mellotron, at the time a very luxurious thing to do. The biggest problem was the
inconstant power supply at The Manor -- power cuts which forced us to interrupt recording sessions to connect
synths to electrical generators. Chris's Moog also played random sequences at times, because of the unstable
current driving the oscillators".
More problems with Franke's Moog plagued the group on a subsequent Australian tour, when it was damaged
in transit, an experience that led TD to re-think their entire live transportation setup. According to Franke: "All
the modules had been built into one big case, to save time setting up on stage. The large case was shipped
upside-down, and after 48 hours on the plane, the heavy transformers came loose and fell through the
circuitry. When I first plugged it into the mains in Australia, I got a heavy electric shock. It wouldn't make any
sound, and two days were spent repairing it and flying stuff in from Germany. That was a nightmare -- I nearly
lost my life on that one".
At the end of 1975, TD released Ricochet, an album culled from the cathedral performances in Europe. 'Part 2'
was quite brilliant, opening with flute and closing with a suite-electronique which wouldn't sound out of place on
the latest ambient House album. Franke was quite proud of it: "Ricochet was the first album we really had a
concept on. We had 16 tracks, so it was the first album where we really got in touch with overdub technology --
it was much more formed".
With no let-up, the group began 1976 by retiring to Berlin to record the soundtrack for William Friedkin's
film The Sorcerer. The collection of 13 short compositions combined throbbing rhythm with chilling suspense.
Froese recalls: "Sorcerer was recorded on an old 8-track Ampex in Berlin. It was one of the four machines that
were in Abbey Road Studios in London, and which were sold after the Beatles era. We had rented an old
movie theatre in Berlin, and made a small studio out of it. The Moog was very useful, and by this stage we
were quite versed in its use. We also used a Fender Rhodes piano, guitars, and even Revox tape machines as
delay units".
Franke: "William Friedkin had heard our music in Los Angeles. He rang up and said he liked it, that it was
innovative and new, and that he'd like to do a film with it. He was interested in having the music playing for the
actors on set. We felt very independent -- it was just us in a room in Berlin, with an 8-track and the script".
Chris Franke has happier memories: "A special favourite, Stratosfear. I especially like it because it has a
feeling of open space. We tried out a new location, Audio Studios in Berlin, which was used for orchestral
recordings. I remember playing music for up to two hours at a time non-stop -- it was so fluid. Usually,
improvising electronic music is a process of planning, starting and stopping, but on Stratosfear we really got
into these long phases. We also brought back some more acoustic sounds bit by bit to add more colour. It was
really the first blend of all the possible material we could play. For me,Stratosfear was the next big step
after Phaedra."
END OF AN ERA
Stratosfear soared up the British and American charts, and in the spring and summer of 1977, Tangerine
Dream played two sell-out tours of the United States (see the 'Live Dreaming' side panel). Encore, a live album
from the tour, was released in October 1977. It captured the full stylistic Dream sound over four tracks -- from
guitar rock to ambient, sequenced compositions to sound paintings. Franke today admits that the tour involved
a lot of improvisation, and that every show was recorded. "It was very expensive to do a good live recording at
that time. We used a 4-track Ampex deck." As well as being a good summation of their musical career up to
that point, Encore proved to be the end of a golden period for the band, as the album was the last to feature
Peter Baumann. After the last concert of the tour at Boulder, Colorado in September 1977, Baumann left the
band for good. Friction between him and Froese had come to a head, and his solo career had taken off
with Romance '76. A second solo album, Trans-Harmonic Nights (released in 1979) was a crucial recording,
on the way to electro-bop and House music. Baumann described it as "near the edge points of pop", and won
global critical acclaim for its creation. But for Tangerine Dream, Baumann's departure was to prove a serious
set-back...
Next month, in Part Two of this feature, Chris Franke and Edgar Froese look back on how they overcame the
difficulties caused by Peter Baumann's departure , and how they spearheaded the development of digital
sampling technology over the course of the next decade.
Not surprisingly, all this equipment was extremely difficult to transport and set up quickly. Franke remembers:
"Because we needed much more time than a rock act to set up, we had to fine-tune. We had special cabling
requirements and new lighting ideas. We had to halve our setting-up time, and the only way to do it was to be
more compact. We did things that are now standard, like having the racks on wheels -- you just open the front
and back, and the rack is there. We had these snakes built, multicores with 120-pin sockets, so it would take
us only half a minute to plug everything in. Everything had to change in order to keep playing advanced
concerts. Hartmut Heinze of Projeckt Elektronik worked for six months before the tour, and even came with us
to oversee things, make little adjustments and repairs to the equipment throughout".