Phaedra – Tangerine Dream

Tangerine Dream’s first disc for Virgin and an absolute classic! Brooding synthesiser sounds over complex pulsing sequencer patterns, where the intonation constantly shifted and where tunes and melodies and the other trappings of popular music are entirely absent from an album unlike anything else of its day.
The title track opens the disc and is the major work on it: almost 17 minutes worth of absolute perfection! Here you will find soaring Mellotron lines, hypnotic pulsating sequencer patterns and bass guitar lines, together with massive washes of synthesiser sound, all contributing to a captivating whole. There are some amazing moments where the whole tonal centre of the work wanders most disconcertingly: apparently, some of these shifts are accidental and are the result of some frantic retuning of oscillators while the recording was still in progress! The result, whether intentional or not, is arranged to perfection and still sends shivers down my spine even now, 25 years on! The second half of the ‘Phaedra’ track is a contemplative mix of singing Mellotron, deep Moog sounds and other shimmering synthesiser voices, which at times sounds almost orchestral in its textures. Incredible!

‘Mysterious Semblance at the Strand of Nightmares’ is a beautiful ballad for Mellotron, played over long washes of phased sound and pulsed coloured noise. Its other-worldliness harks back to earlier Tangerine Dream albums, but the delicate Mellotron tones mixed with heavy Moog voices lend it a much more polished air and confirm that Tangerine Dream were now a true musical force to be reckoned with.

‘Movements of a Visionary’ uses bursts of coloured noise, heavily reverberated and echoed to create an eerie introduction to a sparkling shower of VCS3 sounds, over a simple sequencer pulse. An organ line insinuates itself slowly as more sequencer pulses enter, drifting in and out of phase with each other, while the whole orchestra of sounds explores various ideas, in a way that is reminiscent of works on the earlier album “Atem”. Finally, though, this track reduces to a simpler repeating pulse beneath a delicate synthesiser line, which brings it to a gentle conclusion in a way that is suggestive of a new style in TD’s music. A short study (Sequent c’ — pronounce that as “Sequent middle C”) using a single synth voice then brings this whole epic affair to a close.