Tape 1

• 1.1. Genesis [1970, Electronic Meditation]
• 1.2. Sunrise in the third system [1971, Alpha Centauri]
• 1.3. Zeit [1972, Zeit]
• 1.4. Wahn [1973, Atem]
• 1.5. Green Desert [1973, Green Desert]
• 2.1. Rubycon Part II [1975, Rubycon]
• 2.2. Ricochet Part II [1975, Ricochet, live Britain/France]
• 2.3. 3am at the border of marsh from Okefenokee [1976, Stratosfear]

Tape 2

• 1.1. Cherokee Lane [1977, Encore, live USA]
• 1.2. Bent Cold Sidewalk [1978, Cyclone]
• 1.3. Force Majeure [1979, Force Majeure]
• 2.1. Tangram Set 1 [1980, Tangram]
• 2.2. Quichotte Part II [1980, Pergamon, live East Berlin]
• 2.3. Scrap Yard [1980, Thief, Soundtrack]

Tape 3

• 1.1. Kiew Mission [1981, Exit]
• 1.2. Exit [1981, Exit]
• 1.3. White Eagle [1982, White Eagle]
• 1.4. Logos [1982, Logos, live London, two extracts]
• 2.1. No Man's Land [1983, Hyperborea]
• 2.2. Barbakane [1984, Poland, live Warshaw]
• 2.3. Central Park [1985, Le Parc]
• 2.4. Yellowstone Park [1985, Le Parc]
• 2.5. Song of the Whale Part I: From Dawn... [1986, Underwater Sunlight]
• 2.6. Song of the Whale Part II: ...to Dusk [1986, Underwater Sunlight]

Tape 4

• 1.1. London [1987, Tyger]
• 1.2. Livemiles II [1988, Livemiles, live Albuquerque/Berlin, extract]
• 1.3. Canyon Carver [1987, Canyon Dreams, Video Soundtrack]
• 1.4. Marakesh [1988, Optical Race]
• 1.5. Graffiti Street [1992, Rockoon]
• 1.6. Ghazal (Love Song) [1988, Optical Race]
• 2.1. Flashflood [1997, Oasis, Video Soundtrack]
• 2.2. At Darwin's Motel [1996, Goblin's Club]
• 2.3. Firetongues [1994, Turn of the Tides]
• 2.4. Hamlet [1994, 220 Volt, live USA]
• 2.5. Catwalk [1995, Tyranny of Beauty]
• 2.6. Order of the Ginger Gild [1997, World Tour 1997 limited edition]

(Edgar Froese, with Klaus Schulze (drums) lates 60s/early 70s) - Edgar Froese studied sculpture in Berlin during the 60s, fining himself living a rather bohemian livestyle. He formed a rock band called The Ones, later Tangerine Dream, playing at art exhibitions, even giving performances at Salvador Dali's parties in Cadaques. Frustrated by playing british and american rock, he got part of a german avantgarde movement, looking for his own way of musical expression. The recored label Ohr ( = ear), which turned out to be criminal, putting musicians under LSD without their knowledge, and recording and publishing such kind of session parties, surprisingly published a (low quality) session tape as Electronic Meditation. This was never intended for release. I'm not sure whether you like it - I start this sampler with the track Genesis. Electronic Meditation features Conrad Schnitzler on Cello, and young Berlin drummer Klaus Schulze, who happened to lift off an incredible solo carier afterwards (until now).

(Edgar Froese, Peter Baumann, Chris Franke, early 70s) - What followed are a lot of experiments. Chris Franke took over drums on the next album Alpha Centauri as well as some electronic devices which just came up on the music market and fitted very well into Tangerine Dream's concept of an avantgarde band (TD was never intended to be electronic in the first place!). He happened to stay with the band for the next 17 years, so there is the nucleus ``Froese/Franke''. Berlin keyboarder Peter Baumann would join for the third album Zeit ( = time), which, together with the subsequent Atem ( = breath) marks the most experimental period of the band's history. I copied one track of each album here. Sunrise... has got a wonderful organ. I would have loved to tape the title track Alpha Centauri, but it wouldn't fit on the tape together with Zeit which I definetly wanted to have on the tape. I once introduced this track in our music class at school, from then on most of my school comrads took me for crazy. Wahn is a bit atypical, but features great drumming!

(Peter Baumann) - Peter Baumann left to some trip to Tibet. Froese and Franke thought he'd never come back and recorded Green Desert. Since Baumann did come back, the release of this album was postponed until 1986 (!). It somehow goes a step back to rock, demonstrating Froese's really cool guitar and Franke's immense qualities as a drummer. For the next years, it was Froese's affection to play mostly mellotron - a keyboard which isn't actually electronic but plays tapes with pre-recorded sounds (flutes, strings, choirs), whereas Franke specialized very much on purely electronic sound generation, and sequencers - a device, today completely digital - capable of storing notes and calling them automatically. This makes the driving hypnotic and repetitive rythms of the subquent albums which should become real classics!

(Chris Franke) - These are the albums Phaedra (you've got this completely on this strange CD), Rubycon, and Ricochet. These belong to my absolute favourites. Ricochet Part II made me a fan (I was about 15 years old and didn't wanted to hear any other music anymore). Rubycon Part II is really scary - listen to it loud and in the dark - if you're brave! Ricochet summarizes lots of concerts which were completely improvised! Stratosfear (you've got the title track on CD, but I like the other three tracks much more) is more structured. During that time, they've got the offer to do a movie soundtrack for William Fredkin (The Exorcist). The movie - Sorcerer - is a crappy remake of the french ``Wages of Fear'', but the music is great. I don't put it on the tape, however (for reasons of space).

(Edgar Froese) - An american tour was very successful, thus the album Encore. Baumann left the band after some personal differences. This changed TD. Froese and Franke tried something new and hired Steve Jolliffe, flutist and singer, and recorded Cyclone, reputed as the worst TD album though I don't agree. The 70s end for TD with Force Majeure, featuring Klaus Krieger on drums. A poll among TD fans showed this album as the most popular, which is strange since it is more rock-oriented and not much in the style of the previous albums. It is excellent, and I had to put the complete Force Majeure track on here.

(Schmoelling, Franke, Froese) - A second major era started with Johannes Schmoelling as a third member. Johannes Schmoelling is a studied musician and sound engineer and worked as a stage sound technician. His influence on the TD sound is evident on the 1980 album Tangram. His debut were two remarkable concerts in East Berlin - the first ever for a german band there (though not much in the press since TD ain't `popular' enough). It was released as Pergamon. The soundtrack Thief established a good relationship with film producer Michael Mann, who wanted to hire TD later for the Miami Vice soundtrack (but TD was already busy with another TV show which became less famous...). At that time, Froese and David Bowie were interested in a collaboration, but they simply couldn't get together. Being involved in the early 80s peace movement, TD recorded Exit and distributed it for free to many seleced people of all social `classes' in east Europe and the Soviet Union. The beautiful title track of White Eagle happened to become their only german top ten hit as the soundtrack of a popular german TV show.

(Chris Franke, behind him tons of analog and digital sequencers) - The early 80s were extremely productive, with a lot of concerts (documented on Logos and Poland), ongoing regular studio albums (Hyperborea and Le Parc), and a lots of soundtrack work to keep the money coming in for all the expensive equipement. Meanwhile, TD had not only all kinds of music technology available, they even developed them, inventing new kinds of sound synthesis in collaboration with the industry. They are still inputting industry with ideas for electronic instruments. Le Parc is - by the way - a dedication to some parcs in the world they've happened to visit on their world tours. ``Yellowstone Park'' features - besides an artificial one - the voice of Clare Torry, who sings also on ``The Great Gig in the Sky'' on Pink Floyd's ``Dark Side of the Moon''.

(Haslinger, Franke, Froese) - Johannes Schmoelling got a bit bored and probably also overload with the tour-album-tour-album schedule, quitted TD, made some very good solo albums, and finally returned to his old job as a theater stage sound technician. Some young Austrian guy, Paul Haslinger, studied pianist from Vienna (!), should join and debuted on one of the best albums ever made by TD: Underwater Sunlight. Convince yourself with Song of the Whale. Afterwards, Froese dared to use vocals again, but this time it should be poetry: Tyger features lyrics by William Blake. The audience hated this album, so did the singer whose bad attitude jeopardized the project. I, however, love it (London).

A concert on the 1st of August 1987 in Berlin happened to be the last one for Chris Franke, who, after 17 years, didn't agree anymore with Edgar Froese. He is now a purely movie soundtrack producer in Los Angeles, his biggest success the soundtrack of Scott's (and many others) favourite Science Fiction show 'Babylon 5'. The soundtrack of the nature video Canyon Dreams to which he contributed, was released later.

TD became more pop-oriented meanwhile, with Optical Race, a fantastic album (note the incredible driving triole-groove in Marakesh!), Lily on the Beach, and Melrose. I don't have the latter two albums on CD, so no tracks of them here. Lily on the Beach is pretty horrible anyway (though brilliant sound), and Melrose features some great tracks, but...

(Linda Spa, Jerome Froese, Edgar Froese) - Paul Haslinger decided to stay in America, and Edgar Froese's son Jerome became a member of the band - a father and son duo. He sneaked in already on Melrose. The next album was Rockoon, awful album, but with one wonderful track: Graffiti Street. Together with guitarist Zlatko Perica and austrian ex-model, keyboarder and, in the first place, saxophonist Linda Spa, they recorded Turn of the Tides and the live album 220 Volt. Again only some favourite tracks (especially the cool Froese guitar on Hamlet). Catwalk on Tyranny of Beauty happened to be performed live on a fashion show in L.A., and - but not live - in a very good restaurant in Palermo I've been in together with Duncan last May. I dropped my cutlery when I recognized this!

(setting up for a concert in 1997) - The last year has seen the album Goblin's Club. I arranged the tracks on the 2nd side of the last tape not in chronolocial order, and also made a somewhat different selection than the 'best of', in order to give the tape some nice structure in the develpement of climaxes. I finish the tape with a special piece of a limited mini-CD sold on their recent tour. The tour features again guitarist Zlatko Perica, and drummer Emil Hachfeld, a school-comrad of Jerome. He played some acoustic drums and percussion (not a drum kit where you sit at, but he was standing having all this stuff around him). These acoustic drums are partly electronically processed and make an incredible strange and good sound! There will be the live album Tournado soon on which you can experience a drum solo of him, plus a couple of dance-mixes - yes: dance-mixes - of their recent stuff. Edgar and Jerome did this just for fun and - meanwhile publishing under their own label - spontaneously released it as The Dream Mixes. I did not put this on here, but the track Flashflood of the video soundtrack Oasis may give you some vague idea.

Very good to read are the biography and `Colleagues...' sections on the Tangerine Dream official homepage at http://www.netstore.de/tadream/. You can also find soundfiles of each album there (in RealAudio format).

Hope I didn't bore you too much