Recorded in 2018, this is the fourth instalment in a series of releases showcasing ‘live’ performances by Tangerine Dream (TD), incorporating recordings from festivals in Norway, Italy and Sweden, and being released as a double vinyl album on translucent green discs… which means having to get up every twenty minutes to turn the disc over!
The TD of the 1970s — Edgar Froese, Peter Bauman and Christopher Franke — released a number of studio albums but rarely performed them as recorded, preferring instead to improvise onstage and ‘live in the moment’. This current iteration occasionally goes back and plays pieces from those albums, as they recently did with Phaedra, and these sessions are an attempt to recreate the 1970s with a series of shows based largely on the improvisational aspect, with the best attempts being released after being remastered at Abbey Road.
None of the current TD — Thomas Quaeschning, Ulrich Schnauss and Hoshiko Yamane — had even been born when Phaedra was released in 1974, but this is the modern Tangerine Dream, who were given Edgar Froese’s blessing to continue shortly before he died in 2015. On Sessions IV, they’ve taken some deep dives into the TD back catalogue, which has helped keep the band’s name in front of a new generation.
There are three pieces of music covering the four discs. Recorded in Pisa, ‘Four Degrees Parallax, pts 1-2’ takes up both sides of the first disc. They ask an awful lot of their audience as this is a piece which runs to over 35 minutes, while ‘Gothenburg 2018’ and the curiously named ‘Persepsjontransformasjon’ only take up one whole side each.
If you’re familiar with Tangerine Dream, you’ll know exactly what to expect: wave after wave, and layer upon layer of soaring and descending synths, sequencers and mellotrons, all weaving sound patterns, producing an aural melange of electronic soundwaves with pulsating beats and flickering tweets adding an extra sonic dimension to their sound. Occasionally there’s a melancholic feel as the sound changes, before the use of violin and even a piano varies the mood, but it’s all performed with a degree of subtlety, with sounds not being overloaded. That they can do all this while still retaining the listener’s attention is their real skill, as the applause at the end indicates.
Tangerine Dream are a gift to the imagination with their ability to create the kinds of sounds which enable the listener to travel inside their own mind. The current line-up has taken Edgar Froese’s vision and run with it, so far quite successfully.
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