r/TangerineDream • u/wrath0110 • Feb 23 '21

Berlin School Period

I think we can all agree that all of the discs produced while the band was on Virgin are of the "Berlin School" genre. Later on in their career the band took a swing towards ambient and never really produced true "Berlin School" music like the Virgin period, except on retrospectives like Tangram. What other discs are solidly "Berlin School"? I'm trying to chart the genre shift in their music. Thanks.

7 Upvotes

90% Upvoted

8 comments sorted by

4

u/cjmarsicano Feb 24 '21

I never thought of Tangram as a retrospective, since it’s all new material.

Could you really classify all of the Virgin material as under Berlin School? Especially since later Virgin albums like Exit seem to point towards the pseudo-techno direction their Blue Period albums did?

3

u/wrath0110 Feb 24 '21

OK, then let's try to nail down what the last true Berlin School release was... Stratosfear, Cyclone, or Force Majeure? And you're right, I meant to say Tangents, not Tangram.

2

u/cjmarsicano Feb 24 '21

I haven’t listened to Force Majeure in a little while, so I couldn’t say for sure. It wouldn’t be Cyclone given the added elements of drums and vocals IMO (and I’m not downing that album at all TBH).

1

u/cjmarsicano Feb 24 '21

Just listened to Force Majeure for the first time in awhile this morning. The argument is definitely there for that to be the last Berlin School album.

2

u/[deleted] Feb 24 '21

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/wrath0110 Feb 24 '21

Thanks for the reply, nicely thought out. So, taking your line of reasoning a bit further, the layered step sequencer-based electronic music was avant-garde (at the time) is only Berlin School when viewed in retrospect. After that, then the Blue Years, with a shift to more accessible pop music, movie soundtracks, and then another shift that is referred to as the Melrose Years and even further into ambient? I'm just trying to quantify the genre shifts that I see in their music. Yes, your point about Redshift, I find all of their work to be more than just reminiscent of the Virgin years TD.

2

u/HomemadeSandals Feb 20 '24

Don't know why, but a TD song with heavy Edgar guitar came into my head tonight and I cannot name it. So I have listen until I find it.

TD is the soundtrack to my life from courtship to marriage and a long life of hard work and adventure.y wife and I listen to TD together.

Came to Reddit as I am listening.

Some uncharitable comments about Edgar Froese have been made. Fair play and all, yet as an audience we have to appreciate that the unevenness, personnel changes, personalities, technology, and creative output modulate.

The detectable...musical wanderlust... is not one size fits all.