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Unsung Forum » Remembering Edgar Froese (1944-2015) |
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The Seth Man 1242 posts |
Jan 24, 2015, 01:04
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The sole original member and driving force behind Tangerine Dream died today. What?!! I was figuring on him just continuing recording Tangerine Dream albums well past retirement age until I found out his age and realized that that’s exactly what he did. A world without Edgar Froese is incomprehensible to me, despite the fact I stopped keeping up with their releases after Tangerine Dream’s 1982 album, “Exit.” With each passing year, the albums kept coming -- either with constantly reconstituted lineups of T-Dream or solo albums -- but I could never begrudge that beefy, stern-looking Teutonic author of huge passages of “Electronic Meditation,” “Alpha Centauri,” “Ultima Thule,” “Zeit,” “Atem,” “Phaedra” and “Rubycon” a single soundtrack or live album. This was because Tangerine Dream have always been on my shelves, my turntable, in my 1982 Sony Walkman, CD players, on my hard drive and in my mind since the late seventies when I made that fearless import purchase of “Ricochet” for $7.99. There was no other group that progressed through that particular route of experimental music in their time, or any time: from a power trio in the late sixties to an electronic trio in the mid seventies AND no two albums bore any resemblance to each other except for how different they were. The landscapes they populated my mind ran from ethereal to dark, glacial to epic, and sometimes (like “Wahn”) so completely freaky they embossed their impressions on my brain forever. Like an inverse “Green Eggs and Ham,” I’ve listened to them everywhere and doing everything: walking through a snowstorm with my brand new Sony Walkman, sitting on a plane flying above the Atlantic Ocean, walking summer dunes in North Carolina, driving California highways, watching the sunset and many other scenarios. I bought a CD of “Phaedra” for the studio I worked at in the early nineties and spent countless hours on the computer in deep concentration spinning it on infinite repeat at low volume. (I played it so much for years that when I last saw it in 2010, the clear plastic of that jewel case was nearly opaque. Not from dust, but from two decades of scuff mark from filing and re-filing.) I have listened to T-Dreams first six albums well over hundreds of times, but the one I may have played over a thousand times is their third one: “Zeit.” I know it so well that I know every anomaly on the Sanctuary CD from the mid nineties that match the ones on the Japanese MLPS CD. Luckily, “Zeit” was properly cleaned up when Reactive/Esoteric issued the cleanest version to date in 2011. Not only that, but it came as double CD and the live concert on disc two, “Klangwald (parts 1 and 2),” from Cologne in 1972 proves the brilliance of Tangerine Dream as improvisers. It’s a performance that runs the gamut from deeply chilled ambience to noisy abandon and back through a huge patch of Kosmische territory that they had somehow managed to leave untouched until this performance. It’s transcendental. The terrain Froese mapped during this earliest period of T-Dream I not only know by heart, but I’ve constantly been able to re-experience anew. Over and over again. For years now. It’s going to snow tonight. It’ll be the snow falling all over the darkened earth, with “Zeit” playing in the background. There is nothing like Tangerine Dream and it’s because there was no one else like Edgar Froese. He’s literally -- and figuratively -- in my mind forever.
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Squid Tempest 8761 posts |
Jan 24, 2015, 01:19
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Tangerine Dream changed my whole way of looking at things around the time of Phaedra and Rubycon. Here is my tribute - recorded live tonight when I heard. RIP Edgar, man. https://soundcloud.com/black-tempest/mysterious-remembrance
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Citizensmurf 1703 posts |
Edited Jan 24, 2015, 03:50
Jan 24, 2015, 03:49
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Thanks Seth Man. As always, it was your reviews of Phaedra and Rubycon which made me look past the KRS recommended Ohr albums, and into the Virgin years, which I love moreso. Tomorrow I shall scour the used vinyl shops in search of Epsilon and Aqua, and maybe Ages, hoping they haven't posthumously inflated their monetary worth to reflect their sonic worth.
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machineryelf 3681 posts |
Jan 24, 2015, 07:19
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His music changed my life, about 76 I was really into Sabbath & The Beatles, hooks,riffs, I Saw Her Standing There & Paranoid were my idea of the pinnacle of musical achievement. A tv programme had a piece by Kraftwek as its introduction which my smug older brother incorrectly said was by TD Went to a record shop, saw Zeit, cheapest one and a double,RESULT! more bang for my buck. Then I took it home and put it on. WTF! where are the riffs, where is anything approaching a song, what the hell is this, obviously it was cheap because it was a load of old nonsense. But I went back because I'd paid my hard earned paper round money for this, it's on Virgin they wouldn't put out any old rubbish and although it made zero sense to me it kept pulling me back, slowly as i repeatedly listened it opened up and made me see there was more to this music lark than I'd realised. Luckily the next TD lp I got was Ricochet which was a whole lot easier to get into, opened doors to Can, Amon Duul II, Hawkwind and onwards, but my fallback lps whenever something relaxing/trancey is required have always remaine Zeit & Ricochet. I went to Cairo once and the out standing memory of an otherwise horrible visit was watching the sun rise over the Nile whilst listening to Nebulous Dawn,also in Kensal Rise, sun coming up over the canal after a King Kurt gig the night before, you know you're onto something when even coated in green gunk, coming down off a Special Brew hangover and coughing out last nights B&H gunk you stll feel special & blessed to be listening to something so wonderful footnote.after the sunrise in Kensal I went to a tea van for a cuppa tea and a bacon butty, when the tea guy asked me what I was listening to he called me an old hippy, spent half an hour talking about the Roundhouse and gave me another cup of tea and a fried egg sandwich for free
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IanB 6761 posts |
Jan 24, 2015, 12:57
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machineryelf wrote: Went to a record shop, saw Zeit, cheapest one and a double,RESULT! more bang for my buck. Then I took it home and put it on. WTF! where are the riffs, where is anything approaching a song, what the hell is this, obviously it was cheap because it was a load of old nonsense. But I went back because I'd paid my hard earned paper round money for this, it's on Virgin they wouldn't put out any old rubbish and although it made zero sense to me it kept pulling me back, slowly as i repeatedly listened it opened up and made me see there was more to this music lark than I'd realised. We were lucky. That is an experience that is so firmly of that time. It was my doorway into lots of things I didn't like on first listen. The economics of album buying meant you actually had to do some work. That was certainly my experience of Crimson and VdGG and Beefheart and Coltrane among many many others. That age is long gone .... http://www.hypebot.com/.a/6a00d83451b36c69e2017d42612b1e970c-450wi
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phallus dei 583 posts |
Jan 24, 2015, 16:35
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A touching eulogy. Tangerine Dream were one of my first krautrock loves, back in late '95 and early '96 when I was using Cope's krautrocksampler to introduce me to the genre. TD were just so vast, and so fucking eternal!! I had never heard anything like that before. I remember late nights listening to TD at low volume in my bedroom in my parent's house and being literally transported into another world. I remember playing "Wahn" for my mom and my friends and getting weird looks. I remember listening to "Birth of Liquid Plejades" for the first time and crying when Florian Fricke's melody appears - it comes in at the absolutely perfect time, with emotionally devastating effect. (I've still only heard the Sequel CD version of Zeit, though.) I followed the TD trail with diminishing returns up though Hyperborea and then Green Desert. In my mind, TD stopped there, leaving this world for the ethereal.
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Monganaut 2373 posts |
Edited Jan 24, 2015, 17:33
Jan 24, 2015, 17:32
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Wow! what a tribute. This is awesome, could almost be made by the man himself....you are definately channeling something there ST.
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Adman 157 posts |
Jan 24, 2015, 18:44
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Damn - got into Krautrock early in the 70s (despite all my Midlands school mates into Sabbath etc thinking I was weird). Remember seeing TD when they came to Leicester De Montfort Hall in the 80s - great stuff. Then had the Ultima Thule Shop in Leicester to feed my Krautrock habit (this is a very bad day despite City turning over Spurs in the FA Cup).
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Squid Tempest 8761 posts |
Edited Jan 24, 2015, 18:59
Jan 24, 2015, 18:59
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Monganaut wrote: Wow! what a tribute. This is awesome, could almost be made by the man himself....you are definately channeling something there ST. Thanks. My music is steeped in TD, no escaping my influence.
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machineryelf 3681 posts |
Jan 25, 2015, 09:49
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that's lovely, worthy of the man himself
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