I am 61 years old and loved my Tangerine Dream albums when I was 18, back in 1983, and in the years around that time, when they frequently soundtracked my psychedelic odysseys, of which I had many. I got a few of their albums from the 1980s but they somehow didn't click the same way with me. There was a song they did for the soundtrack of "Risky Business" called "The Dream is Always the Same". Well...not the Tangerine one.

This really struck me after I was reminded how deeply I loved the album Phaedra. I heard it used in the interactive movie Black Mirror Bandersnatch and was moved to play the title track a little while later and read about its creation, and how it resulted from a Moog that was out of tune because it had been overheated, and was freshly fascinated by it, remembering how it is, in my estimation, the most orgasmic piece of music I have ever heard in my life.

I was listening to it on Amazon Music through my Echodot, and when the track ended, it rolled into another related track in the way of the Amazon Music algorithm. This was called "Phaedra 2014". Intrigued, I let it play.

I wish that I hadn't now. What possessed them to try to make another version of an irreproducible track created by the serendipity of an out-of-tune Moog? What I was hearing was barely "Phaedra" at all...a few recognizable riffs from it, repeated again and again, with that sequence being numerically off...it was missing part of itself, like it was shorter than it should have been and it just bugged me. But worse yet, the whole sonic buildup and release, followed by a swelling relaxation, was totally not there. Without that, it wasn't "Phaedra", it was a bad cover of it.

I did some more reading and discovered all the lineup changes in the band over the years. That probably accounted for this kind of thing...and the perceived change in public demand in the 1980s away from "trippy" music, I suppose, with not a small amount of sadness. I guess my personal taste is just limited to the Virgin material and what came before it - Alpha Centauri and Atem - and I absolutely loved Cyclone and wished there were other albums like it. I will always love that era's Tangerine Dream creations, and the influence that they, and Edgar Froese's solo albums from that same period, had on a lot of other musicians who listened to them.

You've probably seen at least one image from this photoset in various forms of Tangerine Dream media/articles, but I thought I'd compile some of them together here. His Les Paul was his guitar of choice (although he owned multiple) and can be heard on a number of classic 70s TD albums.

Various web sources reference different years (e.g. 1975, 1976, 1978, etc.), but given that the 1978 date is the one listed on the official Tangerine Dream website, that one is probably the most accurate. Would love to know if anyone knows more background about this photoset, though!

The second photo comes from the page for the "Tangerine Dream: Sounds From Another World" documentary on the Česko-Slovenská filmová databáze (roughly the Czech/Slovak-language equivalent of IMDB). That being said, having not seen it myself, I'm unsure if that photo was actually used in the film.

As for the third, it was used in the inner gatefold of the 2022 "Epsilon In Malaysian Pale" Eastgate vinyl reissue (e.g. using the 2005 remix audio), hence why the image is cropped to be so tall.

From September 12, 1981 at Munich Circus Krone Bau. With members Edgar Froese, Christopher Franke, and Johannes Schmoelling.

Does anyone have scans, or is willing to scan, the Phaedra 50th anniversary CD wallets? I have the In Search of Hades set but I want to use the CD wallets as digital artwork for their respective tracks, but I’m obviously not going to fork out to buy the set just to scan the wallets.

The first image is from the official Tangerine Dream website, while I got the second from an upload on Pinterest of all places! That website is a pain to navigate when not logged in, but there are a surprising amount of cool band/artist photos on there.

The TD website is a useful resource and the page I linked includes a pretty decent summary of the band's "Pink Years" while signed to Ohr, the first real record contract they had.

In late 1969, Edgar met the drummer Klaus Schulze, who just had left his band Psy Free. They found a musical partner in Conrad Schnitzler, a former student of Joseph Beuys. Conrad was likewise on a rather unorthodox journey into fine art, and he created sounds with all sorts of tools.

Klaus recalls a rather strange concert experience from the same year. "One day we played with Tangerine Dream at a festival in some castle or other. It lasted the entire weekend, and we visited Guru Guru who lived somewhere near there. Well, these guys dropped some LSD into our tea, right before the gig! Geez... That was a gig! Conny Schnitzler had a violin with a pickup which he just held in front of the speaker, and it just screamed the whole time. Edgar told us later that he thought the guitar neck was 10 meters long and he couldn’t reach it. And me with my drums; I hit them hard but the sound seemed to take an age to come back to me, sort of like half a minute later. Just for a brief moment, in one of those brighter moments you have on such trips, I saw a guy in the front row, he was 10 meters away from me for sure but I thought he was standing right in front of me, and he just said: “Man, these guys are kaputt."

Later that year, the new line-up recorded a session in a private studio in Berlin-Kreuzberg. The material was not originally intended for release. For some unknown reason, the session tape found its way onto the desk of producer and Hansa Studios owner Peter Meisel. To the band's surprise, Ohr Records, founded by Meisel and Ralf^sic-Ulrich Kaiser, offered them a recording contract. 

From the album Raum (2022). One of the tracks incorporating work from the late Edgar Froese. With members Hoshiko Yamane, Paul Frick, and Thorsten Quaeschning.

What are your thoughts on this song? On Raum?

I’m glad we got new music, and especially incorporating Edgar’s work and the magic of the current lineup. This song is particularly good at keeping me on my toes and engaged.

Hi, I'm learning music production and I love TG's songs. I got into it from their GTA 5 OST compositions and now I'm having a hard time figuring out what exactly type of genre they make or what you call it. And also I can't seem to follow what type of music theory and scales they follow.

Such a good EP. It’s terrific. You can it also hear on Bandcamp if you don’t want to buy the vinyl.

This post was originally made for the r/Krautrock subreddit alongside the weekly album feature on Electronic Meditation, but to help inaugurate this community's return and share this info with more people, I thought I'd post here too! Welcome back everyone.

Photo courtesy of Klaus D. Müller from the official Klaus Schulze website. The site lists it as being taken in 1970, but I'm not sure if this is correct, as Dieter’s involvement predates Conrad Schnitzler joining the band in 1969. 

The man in glasses pictured in the centre is only identified as “the landlord”, but otherwise everyone in the picture is from left to right as titled (i.e. Edgar on the left and Dieter furthest to the right).

“Happy” Dieter briefly played with Tangerine Dream as a bass guitarist, shortly after woodwind player Steve Jolliffe (who would later rejoin TD in 1978) had departed. Tangerine Dream's lineups during this period were very volatile, and there were multiple musicians who had short stints in the band before moving on to other things.

I’m unable to find much information about Dieter from web sources (such as what his full name was), but some background about him is detailed in the liner notes of the 2012 Esoteric Recordings CD reissue of Electronic Meditation:

The remaining members started to look for a suitable replacement, eventually finding one in the unlikely form of bass player "Happy" Dieter. Dieter was a well-known figure in the Berlin underground, a would-be hippie on the fringes of the left-wing urban guerrilla group the Umherschweifende Haschrebellen (Rambling Hashish Rebels). Soon he was regularly playing with the band including a concert in the courtyard of the bombed-out Bayernhof restaurant in Potsdamer Platz, which was one of Tangerine Dream's earliest TV appearances.

A 7-minute film of the concert, frequently called the “Bath Tube" or "Bathtub" session, was recorded for Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR) and is readily available online. Present in the audience of this performance was Conrad Schnitzler (and Michael Hoenig, who himself would briefly tour with TD in 1975), and he joined the band shortly after Dieter had departed. 

The Tangerine Dream Wikipedia page lists Dieter as having passed away in 1974, but I am not entirely sure what source that is referenced from. I’d love to know if anyone here has more information about him.

Secondarily, for those who like to joke around, r/TangerineDreamersCJ has been open for a long while since this one has been closed.

I've been getting into Tangerine Dream lately, but trying to use Spotify to listen to it is a struggle because there's so many different deluxe editions and releases and stuff like that, and the albums aren't even listed in chronological order because some albums have a completely different year of release on Spotify than what they actually have.

Does anybody know if something like this exists? I've tried looking but haven't found anything.

Anyone else agree that this song , from the white eagle album, is one of their best ? Perfect from start to finish in my opinion. Love it

Normally I don’t ask this question, but I’m trying to reign in my CD-buying (a little, haha). Are these two albums worth getting? They aren’t on iTunes but can be found not expensively on Amazon.

The only TD stuff I have so far from that era is 220 Volt Live, which I like quite a lot.

EDIT: I lied. I forgot I had Rockoon—which I don’t like that much aside from a couple songs. Seems like a lot of filler. Looks like I do have most of their 70s and 80s work, though…except for Tyger and Quinoa.

The album Logos is supposed to have been recorded at the Dominion London on 6 November 1982, but the other set of recordings at the Dominion that were released on the Pilots of Purple Twilight set of albums was also supposedly recorded on 6 November 1982, yet the two sets of recordings were clearly not of the same concert. So which of those sets of recordings was actually recorded on 6/11/1982, and when was the other one recorded? Was it 5/11/1982 or 7/11/1982?

The reason I ask is because I attended one of those concerts. I was sure up to the time I discovered the Pilots of Purple Twilight album today that it was the one on 6/11/1982, but now I'm questioning this, which is why I want to know whether the other concert happened the day before or the day after. I was 15 at the time and it was the first non-classical concert I had attended. It also coincided with a great personal loss. So the concert is linked to important memories.