Tangerine Dream – From Dawn ‘Til Dusk: 1973-1988

This is the first Tangerine Dream effort I’ve ever owned. I bought it purely because I’d read Bruce talking about them before. Let’s give ‘er!

Tangerine Dream has released over 100 albums since 1967, which is boggling. They seem to be widely regarded as one of the preeminent pioneering acts in electronic music, that’s for sure.

Covering the years 1973-1988, this 1991 compilation is a snapshot of their experimental electronic/rock/pop music from that earlier period. Dave Simpson’s liner notes just about cover it:

The band’s music has always sought to capture and evoke the technicolour dream-state, to prompt a condition where the music becomes the trigger for some kind of mental wandering. To hear Tangerine Dream at their best is to experience the full power of technology as a sense-surrounding aural force, where the sound becomes a kind of all-enveloping black hole, a canvas for all thoughts and projections; a screen, ready for illumination.

and then as the liner notes end…

…Tangerine Dream remain an enigma. Ridiculed by some for their general intransigence, the same consistency has seen them survive changing fashons, fluctuating line-ups and occasional stagnation; not to mention the ravages of time and deafening PAs. In 1991, as ever, Tangerine Dream are still the hitch-hiker’s guide to an infinite galaxy. A journey into space for the price of an LP.

Precisely. Through the good headphones, this was exactly as described above: an expedition into the senses and the mind that seems gentle and yet capable of rocking well too, all of which becomes soothing and expanding as it unfolds. There’s an open quality to it all, and the whole is one of lifting, rejoicing, celebrating, and empowering beauty.

I don’t know a whole lot about this band, or even if this is a good compilation to get or a good period to start with, from them, but I do know now that I enjoyed this disc and would be open to suggestions for hearing more by this band!