The short version
- February 1974, the first Tangerine Dream album for Virgin, and the one that put the sequencer at the centre of the music.
- A Moog drifted out of tune in a cold room. They kept the accident.
- The title track takes a whole side. Seventeen minutes, thirty-nine seconds.
- No single, no airplay, number 15 in Britain. The Berlin School blueprint starts here.
On a first hearing of the title track it sounds like the tape is broken. Around the eleventh minute the whole thing sags, the sequence slides flat, and for a few seconds it sounds like the machine is dying. It was not broken. It was a Moog modular in a cold room in Oxfordshire, drifting out of tune as the heating came on, and three men in Berlin deciding, later, to leave it in. That decision is the whole album.
Where it sits in the history of music
By the end of 1973 Tangerine Dream had made four albums for the German label Ohr, each stranger and quieter than the last. Zeit (1972) was seventy-two minutes of almost nothing happening, beautifully. Atem (1973) caught the ear of John Peel, who named it one of his records of the year, and that in turn caught the ear of a twenty-three-year-old record-shop owner in London who had just released Tubular Bells and was looking for a second act. Richard Branson signed them to Virgin. The advance bought a Moog modular system and a plane ticket to England.
They recorded at The Manor, Virgin's studio in a country house at Shipton-on-Cherwell, in November and December 1973. The engineer was Phil Becque, and by most accounts nobody, including the band, knew what the record was going to be until it was nearly finished.
- Recorded
- November to December 1973, The Manor, Shipton-on-Cherwell, Oxfordshire
- Released
- 20 Feb 1974, Virgin Records
- Line-up
- Edgar Froese, Christopher Franke, Peter Baumann
- Instruments
- Moog modular with 960 sequencer, Mellotron M400, VCS 3, Farfisa and Fender Rhodes, organ, flute, guitar
- Chart
- UK No. 15, with almost no radio play. Certified gold in the UK
- Length
- 37:46
It is the band's first record on Virgin, the first with a sequencer at its centre, and the first to sell in real numbers outside Germany. The trio that made it stayed together for four more years, and the next two albums, Rubycon and Ricochet, are the ones people mean when they say "classic Tangerine Dream." But this is where it starts.
Edgar Froese
Twenty-nine. Painted the cover. Played the second track alone.
Christopher Franke
Twenty. The one at the Moog when the title track happened. Portrait is recent.
Peter Baumann
Twenty. Wrote and played the closing track by himself. Left the band in 1977.
Tracklist
| A1 | Phaedra · Froese, Franke, Baumann | 17:39 |
| B1 | Mysterious Semblance at the Strand of Nightmares · Froese | 9:55 |
| B2 | Movements of a Visionary · Froese, Franke, Baumann | 7:55 |
| B3 | Sequent C' · Baumann | 2:17 |
Four pieces. One side is a single track; the other side is three, and the last of them is barely two minutes long. What follows walks through the title track minute by minute, because it is the piece that taught everyone else how this kind of music is built, and because once you have heard it this way you cannot unhear it.
"Phaedra", 17:39, minute by minute
The rest of the record
"Mysterious Semblance at the Strand of Nightmares" is Froese alone with a Mellotron and a phaser, and it is the piece to play for somebody who thinks this music is cold. It is nine minutes of chords, slowly turning, and it is one of the warmest things the band ever did. "Movements of a Visionary" is the busiest track, all three of them at once, with a sequencer that actually sounds like it is in a hurry. "Sequent C'" is Baumann, two minutes, a flute-like line over organ, and it closes the record like someone quietly leaving a room.
What happened next
The album reached No. 15 in Britain, which for an instrumental German record with no single and no radio play was a small miracle, and it paid for the next ten years. More importantly it drew a map. Every long-form sequencer piece that followed, Schulze's Timewind a year later, Jarre's Oxygène two years later, the whole of what came to be called the Berlin School, uses the same plan: drone, sequence, filter, second sequence, sky, collapse. They did it first, and they did it partly by accident, and they had the sense to keep the accident.
Where to get it
The 2019 remaster on Virgin/UMC is the one to have; the 1990s CDs are thin. The 1974 UK first pressing is the collector's copy and still not expensive. If you buy only one, buy the LP: this is a record that was mixed for a side of vinyl, and the turn-over after "Phaedra" is part of the experience.