Tangerine Dream – Electronic meditation (CMRCD 565)

4 reviews for Tangerine Dream – Electronic meditation (CMRCD 565)

1. 

   J – 2022-11-22

   Electronic Mediation is a significant album for two reasons: it is the first album released by Tangerine Dream, and it marks the first album appearance of Edgar Froese, Klaus Schulze, and Conrad Schnitzler a nexus of musicians who would individually go on to influence and shape the sound of electronic music in Europe for the next several decades.
   The group had been in existence for almost three years with members rotating in and out regularly. Tangerine Dream was still not entirely stable even at the time of this recording as Schulze and Schnitzler both bowed out soon after for other projects, and Froese would hook up with more permanent musicians as well. Thomas Keyserling and Jimmy Jackson also appear playing flute and organ respectively.
   Musically, the album is interesting as it shows a band that is still in a very experimental and transitional phase. However, a bit of warning: Electronic Meditation is not recommended for laid-back listening and drifting. This is not an album that the casual electronic music fan or even casual TD fan would enjoy. This is avant-garde rock and roll bordering on the psychedelic. The music is sometimes harsh, abrupt, and reckless in its approach. The recording is also not of the best of quality, even after remastering. However, what the album lacks in polish and pure novelty (as other bands had tread most of the ground before), it imbues the chaotic sounds with a subtle underlying direction. This is not music for madnesss sake there is promise of things to come.

   Genesis” opens the album with the grinds of Schnitzler on cello with screeches of guitar and odd sounds chiming in. Keyserlings flute flutters overhead as Schulze begins warming up on drums. Soon noodling segways into a tribal beat

2. 

   Dominique Leone – 2022-11-22

   Psychedelic music spawned so many fragmented genres of rock in the late 60s, it’s easy to forget that at one point, most of the bands were trying to accomplish the same, basic thing: To change the world with music. Failing that, they might have settled for freaking themselves out, but exploration into the unknown was the key. Peace and love? Sure, sometimes. Surreal visions of the beyond? Check. Crazy backwards guitar solos? Extra nice. This kind of faith in a better tomorrow through experimentation (or at least the aping of experimentation, in the hopes of stumbling over a little second-hand wisdom) is one of the aspects of late-60s music culture that makes it so unique, and consequently why, in many ways, it was the last time rock was free of its own self-conscious ambition.

   American and British bands were quick to establish national schools of psychedelia, but continental European bands evolved differently. Countries like Germany and Sweden, far from the epicenters of pop and rock flourish, got their news via weekend radio shows and imported LPs. German guitarist Edgar Froese, playing with a beat combo The Ones, had already formed a long-distance attachment to Jimi Hendrix when he met Salvador Dali, and was inspired to form the earliest version of Tangerine Dream (named after a lyric in The Beatles’ Lucy In the Sky With Diamonds”) in 1967. Froese met Berlin club owner Conrad Schnitzler

3. 

   Joe McGlinchey – 2022-11-22

   The very first Tangerine Dream album, with what is practically a holy trinity of Krautrock for a line-up. Edgar Froese, of course, for all intents and purposes is Tangerine Dream. Klaus Schulze would go on to Ash Ra Tempel with Manual Gottsching, before departing that band to start a high profile solo career as a pioneering synthesizer composer. Conrad Schnitzler went on to form the first edition of Cluster with Dieter Moebius and Hans-Joachim Roedelius (called ‘Kluster‘), before also leaving for a solo career. To my knowledge, his current status is as a sort of underground, cult Krautrock icon. Electronic Meditation is basically a rehearsal jam recorded to Revox in October 1969, still quite a distance away from the sequencer synthesizer compositions that came into full prominence with Phaedra.

   Each track on this debut exudes an amorphous, primal, and chilly atmosphere, with no particular destination in mind.
   Genesis” makes you feel as if you were viewing a primitive vista back when the dinosaurs roamed the earth: Schnitzler‘s scraping low cello lines and flute

4. 

   Craig R. J. Cordrey – 1999-11-22

   Edgar Froese, Klaus Schulze, Conrad Schnitzler or the first release by a band called Tangerine Dream. At times sounding like an orchestra tuning up, at others like a well-oiled jazz trio, this album is probably the most non-TD sounding album that Ed has released. Of course, this is not too surprising when we consider that this is a recording of three guys playing with their equipment (no laughing at the back there!).

   Not something to be tried on unsuspecting family members – both my wife and my son were a little taken aback by the even-more-obscure-than-normal noises emanating from the stereo yesterday as I got in practice for the review. Perhaps surprisingly, my 7 year-old son did identify it as TD, but that may be because I only listen to TD as far as he’s concerned (how wrong can you be?).

   Klaus provides some pretty groovy, foot-tapping moments with the drums. The flute is occassionally used to make some very eerie, electronically-generated-sounding effects so that I think the direction is there even without the equipment which would come later. For me, the most irritating thing about the album is the overuse of the grating guitar : Journey in particular has too much screaming twangs which drown out what could be some reasonable work. Whilst the end of Cold Smoke also features plenty of guitar work, it seems more in tune with what else is going on and so adds rather than detracts.

   Looking slightly ahead from this album, I can certainly see the progression into Alpha Centauri (one of my favourites) – the drums are surprisingly similar in style (IMO). What I can’t see is how they moved from this into Zeit, but I suppose that’s for another week.

   Using the Armin Scale of marking, I’d give this a 3AS – raw in places, irritating in others, but original and occassionally groovy.

   1999. Craig R. J. Cordrey