Tangerine Dream - Atem (1973)

Tangerine Dream in the early 70s were making great strides with each album, and now settled into their trio lineup, with this fourth album edged closer to their breakthrough sound.  The grand sweep of mellotron that opens the 20 minute title track was key to this - although Franke's thundering drums still looked back to the sound of Alpha Centauri, Froese's mellotron had established itself in the TD armoury, and Phaedra was only a year away.

Then after five and a half minutes of this dramatic introduction, Atem changes gear into becalmed ambience for the rest of its runtime - another harbringer of the near future.  Three pieces make up the second side of the original LP, starting with the humid junglescape of Fauni-Gena, looking forwards in this case to Froese's second solo album.  Circulation Of Events has the most proto-Phaedra eerie ambience of the whole album - towards the end of the mellotron/organ-dominated piece, a synth pulse gives a foretaste of the epic Berlin-school sequences just around the corner.  TD end the album with one more nod back to their more avant-garde beginnings with the vocal intro to Wahn.  After this they'd become electronic legends.

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Previously posted at SGTG:

Electronic Meditation

Alpha Centauri  

Zeit

Phaedra (scroll past main post)

Rubycon & Richochet

Stratosfear
Encore

Cyclone
Force Majeure
Tangram

Pergamon

Exit

White Eagle 
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Hyperborea

Poland

Le Parc