Wednesday, 4 November 2020

Tangerine Dream - Cyclone (1978)

Been on another big TD binge these last few weeks, and worked through the Virgin years until I got to this - supposedly the 'black sheep' of their classic era.  Time to give it a fair hearing with fresh ears? Absolutely.

Tangerine Dream at the end of 1977 saw their stable lineup of the last six years fracture, with the final departure of Peter Baumann.  Edgar Froese and Chris Franke returned to the studio the following January, adding drummer Klaus Krüger and multi-instrumentalist Steve Jolliffe.  The English-born Jolliffe's association with TD actually predated their first album, so he was effectively rejoining the band.  The sessions by their own accounts were a bit of a try-anything blank slate, with competing voices for the overall direction.  Then Jolliffe decided to sing...

Cyclone remains one of only a tiny number of TD albums with vocals.  And to be honest, Jolliffe's weird, often effects-laden voice suits the electronic prog sound of Cyclone pretty well.  The lyrics are no more or less nonsensical than on any number of prog classics you could name, and do help establish a fantasy-sci-fi atmosphere.  In the middle section of Bent Cold Sidewalk, Jolliffe's wind instruments add another fresh colouring to the TD palette.  Then for the side-long closer Madrigal Meridian, Froese, Franke and Krüger got their heads down and turned out a classic sequencer-based epic that solidified the Berlin school-prog hybrid they would perfect on the following year's Force Majeure.

pw: sgtg

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11 comments:

  1. mwilson5 November 2020 at 00:29

    Thanks for the TD. Would you happen to have anything with Thorsten Quaeschning. Thanks again

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    1. Alan Burns5 November 2020 at 10:00

      Don't as yet, but might well venture into the Quantum Years on the strength of the tracks I've heard on YouTube and suchlike. They definitely seem to have captured the old magic, whilst also bringing it up to date.

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  2. Granny A5 November 2020 at 00:47

    It was the first thing I ever bought by them, so I'll always have a soft spot for it for that. But it does often get a very unjustified bad rap. Yes, Joliffe's vocals are kinda silly, but they're on like around 12% of the record in total. The middle section of BCD is fantastic, and for me, Madrigal Meridian beats everything and anything else between this and Phaedra, going backwards. (With the possible exception of Sorcerer.)

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  3. Dante D5 November 2020 at 01:01

    …Too true! Fans at the time considered it a bad TD album (at best), but it was a grand Deutsche Spacerock album!

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  4. suppliolistico5 November 2020 at 07:07

    Thanks!!
    Man, surfingtheodyssey (cun cun revival) went down... Now you're my only quality pusher. You stay strong!!

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    1. Fernfrequency5 November 2020 at 14:27

      Wow Cun Cun was such as great bastion of music. A real shame its gone. SINCE radio here in America is god awful and I am being conservative there are no public airwaves that exposure esoteric music. This is why I love the blogs for their passion exposing older music thats fallen in between the cracks and forgotten. When the corporations start to pull them down we are all going to be left in a dark vacuum of corporate music hell. Thank you Alan btw for keeping the torch alive your efforts are very much appreciated!

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  5. Tristan5 November 2020 at 09:54

    Thanks for viewing me! Tristan @ Battlefront

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  6. musicyoucan5 November 2020 at 14:35

    Thanks for this TD opus. Cyclone is a nice TD album, but far from the 3 TD albums considered by most of the TD afficionados as the best ones : Rubycon, Ricochet and Stratosfear as hightlight. However Cyclone is excellent if we compare with most of the TD albums after 1990. Edgar Froese produced so many opus that Christopher Franke ad nauseam decided to leave TD. I have all TD opus and globally quality is very variable. It is not the case of another EM music big name, Klaus Schulze, with also a wery wide discography but with a general high level of quality. As often said, TD delivered so many album than even real TD fans are very rare to appreciate the global TD discography.
    In anycase Thanks a lot for this TD album and for your amazing blog.

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  7. Alan Burns6 November 2020 at 19:37

    Sounds like a good mix! Added

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  8. Anonymous8 November 2020 at 23:53

    Thanks again!

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