Tangerine Dream - Electronic Meditation (1970)

Will be topping & tailing my TD collection here in the coming weeks/months, as the list of previous posts below is pretty heavy on the Virgin years.  Great as those are, it's always fun to start from the beginning, and enjoy this jam-session-as-unexpected-career-launcher with its hilariously inappropriate title (the number of times I've said to people over the years - erm, yeah, it's neither electronic or meditative).  This was the first Tangerine Dream CD I bought, in 1997 - the Castle Communications remaster, which also introduced me to Julian Cope's sui generis writing from Krautrocksampler - and that very CD was freshly ripped for this post.

Pre-synths, the oddball instrumentation that makes up Electronic Meditation includes cello, violin and "Addiator" (an early calculator, somehow amplified) (all by Conrad Schnitzler), guitars, organ, piano, effects and tapes (Edgar Froese) and drums/percussion (Klaus Schulze).  That last name of course gives the sad realisation that this (in hindsight quite incredible and seminal) lineup is now entirely no longer with us, so this post can double as a tribute to Schulze.  Appended to the core trio, but unbekownst to me at time of CD purchase as they wouldn't be fully credited until years later, were organist Jimmy Jackson and flautist Thomas Keyserling.

 

After the fledgling TD jammed in a basic studio in October 1969, no intention then of making a record, Edgar and partner Monika, as the story goes, left for the UK to unsuccessfully establish themselves on these shores.  On return to Berlin, Edgar found a letter from Ohr Records, who'd got hold of the tape and wanted to release it.  With various bits of quirky editing (the backwards voice at the end is actually Froese reading his Dover-Calais ferry ticket), Electronic Meditation became the debut LP of Tangerine Dream.  Two thunderous extended jams, like Pink Floyd's Interstellar Overdrive supercharged, flow like lava at the core of the album, with shorter, more atmospheric pieces making up the runtime.  Edgar Froese would keep playing guitar on TD records for some years, but never as unhinged as this.  Along with Ash Ra Tempel's debut from the following year (with more wild drumming from Schulze), Electronic Meditation remains one of the most striking and thrilling krautrock debuts.

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Previously posted at SGTG:

Phaedra (scroll past main post)

Rubycon & Richochet

Stratosfear
Encore

Cyclone
Force Majeure
Tangram

Pergamon

Exit

White Eagle 
Logos: Live At The Dominion
Hyperborea

Poland

Le Parc