Day 85: Tangerine Dream – The Dream Mixes (I)

Music is a subject rife with things to know. For instance, your favorite modern band (let’s call them OLED Megaphone) could have grown up listening to (let’s call them) The Quimbowls, who grew up listening to Total Recall On VHS, who were hugely influenced by Krautrock, which was a bunch of people reacting to let’s say one pivotal band. Some butterfly flaps his wings and blows the fuzz off a dandelion, and those wisps falling into the breeze are all the things you don’t know about everything you love, as you grab for one and the displaced air sends them scattering further. I’m finding it a lot like that trying to learn about music. Just when I think I’m starting to learn things, I get this album for the day, do a little research, and find out that Tangerine Dream was probably the very butterfly that kicked up half the bands I love nowadays.

HUGE DISCLAIMER FOR THIS ALBUM, WHICH SHOULD BE EMBLAZONED ON ITS JEWEL CASE OR SLEEVE OR THE INCLUDED .TXT FILE: Warning. This album is highly sensitive to your listening equipment. If you disrespect it by trying to listen to it on budget speakers, it will sound a lot like something you’d hear while on hold to take a Target Customer Glad-isfaction survey. For your own sanity, wear headphones or have weapons-grade speakers handy.

Which is to say I spent about three hours listening to this thing on my speakers (not the aforelinked, but scarcely any better) and was ready to write it off as offensively boring, like some Kitaro outtakes CD. And then I put my headphones on.

While songs like “Rough Embrace” and “Jungle Journey” do sound like what might have been stock audio for a rave scene in a 1990s movie, their sonic palettes sounding extremely dated, or basically antique at this point, Tangerine Dream understands how to make that not matter at all. The group waves fistfuls of glow-sticks, creating sound excursions that show off the group’s extensive experience in doing soundtracks. They know how to make a seven minute song positively chug.

From what else I’ve read I’ve gathered that this album is not quite indicative of Tangerine Dream’s overall style. They seem to be more about sedate ambient soundscapes (and a brief listen to their 5-starred-on-Allmusic Phaedra confirms this) and technical alchemy:

The title track was originally based on an improvisation that happened to be recorded in the studio, and unintentionally exhibits one of the limitations of the analog equipment used at the time. As the equipment warmed up, some of the oscillators began to detune (they were highly temperature-sensitive), which was responsible for some of the changes in the music towards the end of the piece.”

FUCKIN’ COOL. How does that translate into dance music? The brains in the group apparently reside in bodies that like to dance, because this shit would kill at the roller rink, with some lasers popping off the disco ball and the fog machine in full swing. You might think that is some condescending remark intended to relegate this album to venues that are ostensibly merriment-oriented without having the savviest grasp on how to party. It is not. I want to buy a roller rink, install a great sound system in it, place 48 or more fog machines around the perimeter of the rink itself, and have them all discharging in a staggered rotation so that there is never not fog bellowing onto the floor. I want to perhaps ingest drugs while I do this, and probably wear very little in the way of clothes. I want for the roller rink to be inadequately ventilated. If this doesn’t sound enticing to you, keep in mind these tunes would be applicable to any other format of rhythm/dance/undulation-oriented party.

Also, as the previous two hours of my very finite life can attest, this is also great music to blare while watching corgi tetherball over and over again.