Friday, 11 June 2021

Tangerine Dream - Le Parc (1985)

Most Tangerine Dream fans have a cut-off point or preferred run of albums - this has been discussed in the comments of a previous TD post here.  Some krautrock purists only favour their first four albums; others might love the breakthrough Virgin era but not much else.  For me, the ending of the Johannes Schmoelling era with Le Parc is something of a cut-off, in that the three or four records beyond it are listenable, but by the time I get to Optical Race I'm in serious guilty pleasure territory.  I do like what I've heard of the more recent "Quantum years", though.

Le Parc, then, was Schmoelling's last Tangerine Dream album before he departed for a solo career, and was also the first studio album of the band's "blue years", named for the vinyl labels on Jive Electro's LPs.  It was conceived as a tribute to parklands around the world; perhaps a soundtrack album for natural/built environments rather than for films (although the album's title track was in fact used as the theme for a short-lived US TV show).  Edgar Froese once described TD's music as "travel music, adventure music, much of which has been inspired by the places we've visited over the years", and this time, the parklands in the titles made the inspirations clear.

Returning to preferred Tangerine Dream eras, some long-time fans found the shorter, concise tracks of Le Parc off-putting (the Clare "Great Gig In The Sky" Torry-voiced closer is the longest at six minutes), but I reckon the balance is just about right.  There's still a clear thread in some tracks to the sound of Hyperborea/Poland, where this lineup arguably peaked: opener Bois De Boulogne, Gaudi Park and The Cliffs of Sydney, for instance.  In the shortest, poppiest offerings like Central Park and Hyde Park, the technological skill and compositional strengths of the three members are still very much present.  On that note, Tiergarten - just three minutes of piano-driven loveliness - is probably my favourite track of all here.

pw: sgtg

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3 comments:

  1. txedomoon11 June 2021 at 17:44

    Fully agree with you on the Le Park cut-off point. Sure I may venture off to the Legend Soundtrack -- I had a chance to talk with Monique Froese at that time (and sounded like a complete doddling fan boy), but I definitely did not venture into the realm of Optical Race, Tyger, etc.

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  2. mwilson11 June 2021 at 21:11

    As a fan of all things TD I am waiting to hear Johannes Schmoelling new CD "21"

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  3. Charly The Kid12 June 2021 at 06:56

    Over time it has occurred to me that the Heartbreakers soundtrack is most probably the remaining sketches that did not make it on to here. Playing them back to back gives a nice idea of everything they likely had laying around at the time, and you can almost imagine them saying, "OK - this one we keep - Roth gets that one...."

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