The short version
- Tangerine Dream's May 1980 album. One track per side, two tracks, 40 minutes.
- It is the first studio album with the new member Johannes Schmoelling, an organist who had been working as a sound engineer at the Schaubühne theatre in Berlin.
- Three months after joining he played a concert in East Berlin, and he said some of what they improvised that night was later played on this record.
- It reached number 36 in the UK. The first reviews were cold, but it became one of the band's better sellers.
31 January 1980, the Palast der Republik in East Berlin. Tangerine Dream's official biography records it as the night a band from the West first played in East Germany. One of the three men on stage had been in the band for three months. Johannes Schmoelling remembered it in a 1985 interview: one week's preparation, and most of the music improvised. Some of it, he said, was played again later on Tangram.
Where it sits in music history
The first steps are in Tangerine Dream: where to start. The guide says to hear the five Virgin albums from 1974 to 1979 first, and names Thief, Tangram and Hyperborea for the 1980s. This is the first record of that decade.
The late-1970s band changed shape often. Of the three who made Phaedra and Rubycon, Peter Baumann left in 1977, and for a few years a wind player and a drummer came and went. According to Wikipedia, Schmoelling's arrival made the band a trio of keyboard players again.
Schmoelling was born in 1950. According to the official biography he began playing his local church organ at twelve and worked as a sound technician at the Schaubühne theatre in Berlin. Another sound engineer, who had worked with him on Robert Wilson's Death, Destruction and Detroit, recommended him to Edgar Froese. In a 1982 interview with a British magazine, Froese said they had ended up taking an absolute unknown who worked as a sound engineer in a Berlin theatre.
The album was recorded in 1980 at Polygon Studios in Berlin, which Wikipedia describes as Christopher Franke's studio in Spandau, and mixed at Hansa in Berlin.
- Released
- May 1980, Virgin V 2147 (UK LP)
- Recorded
- 1980, Polygon Studios, Berlin. Mixed at Hansa, Berlin
- Line-up
- Edgar Froese (keyboards, guitar), Christopher Franke (keyboards, electronic percussion), Johannes Schmoelling (keyboards)
- Produced by
- Edgar Froese, Christopher Franke
- Sleeve
- Monique Froese (design and photograph)
- Length
- two tracks, 40:15
- UK chart
- 36
Track list
| A | Tangram Set 1 | 19:47 |
| B | Tangram Set 2 | 20:28 |
Timings follow Discogs and Wikipedia, which agree. A tangram is an old puzzle of seven pieces that you fit together into shapes, and the fan database Voices in the Net says that is where the title comes from.
Through the two tracks
The guide does not single this record out. Here we hear it as a puzzle being put together.
First, the three players. In a 1994 interview Schmoelling remembered Tangram as something the three of them composed and worked on together. Each had his own area, he said, but it fitted well, and their music was a constructional compromise. Within each side-long piece, listen for the moments when one player steps forward and the other two make room.
Then the texture. In another interview that year Schmoelling said that after he joined they tried more structured elements: jazzier chords, composed melodies, synthesizer solos closer to rock. They wanted a more dynamic sound. Franke told Sound On Sound that they had brought in Oberheim synths, and that the wave of polyphonic synthesizers shows on Tangram.
Last, the hands. In the same interview Franke said Schmoelling was not really a synth player but a very good pianist, and that he taught him a lot about the Minimoog. When a melody comes clearly to the surface, think of those hands.
How to listen
- One side at a time, 20 minutes without stopping.
- Play a side of Rubycon first, and hear how far the same band had travelled in five years.
- The second time through, follow only the melodies. You will hear the pieces being fitted.
What happened next
The album entered the UK chart on 7 June 1980, peaked at 36 and stayed five weeks. According to the official biography the first reviews were poor. NME called it "synthesizer junk", and Germany's Musikexpress thought the sound patterns were starting to exhaust themselves. It still became one of Tangerine Dream's best-selling records.
That October and November came a 26-date European tour. The East Berlin night was released by the East German label Amiga as Quichotte, and Virgin reissued it in 1986 as Pergamon. In 1981 came the score for Michael Mann's Thief and the studio album Exit. Schmoelling stayed until 1985.
In 2008 Edgar Froese released Tangram 2008, the album replayed by him alone. In 2020 Ben Wiseman remastered it from the original tapes, both inside the box set Pilots of Purple Twilight and as a single album.
The one track to send a friend
Send "Tangram Set 1". It runs 19:47. Add one line: Johannes Schmoelling, who helped make it, had been a sound engineer in a Berlin theatre. Edgar Froese called him an absolute unknown. Three months after that unknown joined, he was playing in East Berlin, and that night led to this record.
Where to get it
The 1980 UK first pressing, Virgin V 2147, is the record as it first appeared. Ben Wiseman's 2020 remaster also came out as a single CD. Put on side one and leave it. Like seven pieces settling into one shape, the track finds its place by the end of the 20 minutes.