Friday, 29 October 2021

Tangerine Dream - Exit (1981)

Returning to Tangerine Dream this week and next, in a couple of albums that I often under-rate dute to their proximity to bigger favourites.  1981's Exit saw the now established lineup of Froese, Franke & Schmoelling continue to refine the group's new slick, melodic and more accessible direction: the longest track here is the nine-minute opener Kiew Mission.  A cold war-themed plea for global understanding, recited in Russian by an actress, it's another one of the rare uses of vocals by TD, and is followed by the more static moodpiece Pilots Of Purple Twilight and the catchy, upbeat Chronozon.  
 
Side two of the album reverses the pattern, with two short tracks leading to the eight-minute, highly atmospheric Remote Viewing.  TD's compositional skills were still strong throughout Exit, the three members' individual skills complemented each other well, and they continued to push forward with constantly-developing keyboard technology, the Fairlight being added to their arsenal at this point.

pw: sgtg

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4 comments:

  1. Katja29 October 2021 at 21:53

    This was the first new release that came out after I had first become a fan. After 40 years, while I love all of it, "Pilots" and "Remote Viewing" stand out to me as the towering masterpieces from it. And in a perfect world, "Choronzon" would have at least a decent shot at being a top 40 single.

    I think you may be a little early on the Fairlight credit. Although, they were also known to be handed stuff by manufacturers well before anybody else was aware it existed (or was even about to exist), so who knows. But even if true, this is still probably the last really "fat" sounding analog record by them. White Eagle definitely did have more of an impending digital sheen to it.

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    1. Alan Burns29 October 2021 at 23:33

      The Fairlight bit's lifted from the Voices In The Net fansite, but yeah it might be inaccurate, doesn't cite a source.

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  2. mwilson30 October 2021 at 15:09

    As always thank you for the TD

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  3. parmalee30 October 2021 at 17:57

    I'm one of the many who long maintained that TD totally lost the thread towards the latter part of the seventies, only to eat my words years later. Something something about the gradual inclusion of certain digital, wavetable synths and the like, which I still think largely sound kind of crap frankly, but whatever.

    Anyways, sometime in the early 90s I met another keyboardist sharing the complex where my band practiced. Keyboardists were rare in the, erm, "rock"ish world then, I guess, so we naturally had to check out one another's gear. I had a modified Farfisa Compact Duo, with various effects of my own devising, and this guy had a freakin' Fairlight CMI! I swear! I don't know how, or, for that matter, who he was--either a seriously rich kid or someone "important", I figure. Either way, he somehow had a Fairlight.

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