Tangerine Dream were/are(?) kind of joke nowadays, but when this, their major label debut came out, it was a heavy hitter internationally, but got almost no recognition in their own country of Germany. This album in particular, being considered a bit of a flop, while internationally getting lots of rave reviews. Tangerine Dream at this point, almost seemed like they were totally immersed in writing soundtracks, "Phaedra" could have been made for some insane Stanley Kubrick film. This was Tangerine Dream before they became the New Age stars they are now; messing around on Mellotrons, Moogs, running them through sequencers and filters, getting some pretty impressive results. Edgar Froese is the main force behind Tangerine Dream, always has been, but Christoher Franke and Peter Baumann lineup is pretty crucial and those guys were no slouches either. The first track "Phaedra" is around 18 minutes long, all tension filled ambient music, like some science experiment escaped the lab and is hunting you down, or a gang of futuristic hoods almost have you cornered in the utopian city you dwell in. It sounds corny till you hear it. I love this kind of stuff, Tangerine Dream fall under the Krautrock moniker, but they, along with contemporaries Klaus Schulze, Conrad Schnitzler, and the duo Cluster seemed to be the only folk doing this sort of thing. Only Tangerine Dream made it to the big time, it seemed like they had the aspirations to do more all along. Some of the later stuff they did, like the tracks off the "Risky Business" soundtrack are a bit reminiscent of this period, but after that, the 'Dream head off into New Age territory where I just can't follow. Not a single clunker on their first five albums or so though, this one and "Zeit" being two of my personal favorites. I found my copy at Jive Time, it's not too hard to pick these up, even at a bargain price....4 (long) pieces makes the count at 17962....
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