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AMAZING SOUNDS No.113 / December 31, 2001
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CONTENTS:

SPECIAL NEWS: ELECTROSHOCK FESTIVAL

TANGERINE DREAM (3): THE MACHINERY WORKS WITH UTTER SUCCESS. No
doubt, Tangerine Dream is a legendary band within the electronic
genre and the musical avantgarde in general. Throughout their long
trajectory, they have explored unknown areas in the music world,
and have contributed to create the basis for a wide variety of
current trends.

REVIEWS:
THOMAS GRUBERSKI: "SPACETIME ADVENTURES" Outline Records
REY: "HIDDEN VIBRATIONS"
MICHAEL JON FINK: "I HEAR IT IN THE RAIN" Cold Blue Music
MARTY WALKER: "DANCING ON WATER" Cold Blue Music

====================

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===============A MESSAGE FROM ELECTROSHOCK FESTIVAL

Dear ladies & gentlemen!

I want to inform You that we are preparing the greatest Event in
the history of International modern music. This is the "First
Russian International Festival of Electronic, Electroacoustic,
Experimental & Avant-garde Music-Electroshock". It will take place
at the end of July'02 in St. Petersburg and last for 10 days.

More than 300 composers and musicians will participate in this
historic Event. Manuel Gottsching, Hans-Joachim Roedelius, Dieter
Moebius, Rick Wakeman, Francis Dhomont, Jorge Antunes, Edward
Artemiev, "Art Zoyd", Iasos, Constance Demby, Michel Huygen, Steve
Roach, Vidna Obmana, Jeff Grienke, Dom F. Scab, "T-Bass" are among
them. We also planning to invite Vangelis, Isao Tomita, Brian Eno,
Kitaro and Robert Fripp.

More information about the Festival could be found in our website:

http://www.electroshock.ru
(section "Festival")

We invite all organizations and firms for co-operation. We are
opened for any proposal.

President of the Festival:
Artemiy Artemiev (E-mail: eshock@...)

General Director of the Festival:
Alexander Kozyrev (E-mail: alexss_us@...)

===============

TANGERINE DREAM (3): THE MACHINERY WORKS WITH UTTER SUCCESS

No doubt, Tangerine Dream is a legendary band within the
electronic genre and the musical avantgarde in general. Throughout
their long trajectory, they have explored unknown areas in the
music world, and have contributed to create the basis for a wide
variety of current trends.

From 1975 to 1977, TD gathered an unprecedented success, while
at the same time increasing their level of activity both in the
release of new works and the organization of long international
tours. "Rubycon", "Ricochet", "Stratosfear" and "Encore" marked
this stage. Unlike many other avantgarde bands of the seventies
that had a short, unstable life due to the discontinued work of
their members, TD succeeded in maintaining their stability and
working with the sufficient maturity to open their own path in the
recording market and prosper.
In 1976, Franke created a huge recording studio (the premises
were an old cinema theater) near which he moved, and which he
equipped with sophisticated technology. This studio became, as
time went by, a frequent workplace for the band. There, several
albums were recorded, and most specially, movie soundtracks.
Though each member already had his own studio, Franke's was used
for the tasks that required the presence of all of them. In the
case of the soundtracks, more constricted by time deadlines than
the albums, it was convenient for them to work with more fluency.
In Franke's studio the main themes were composed and the basic
guidelines of the music were decided. Then, each member worked in
his own studio on different scenes. Froese's, sited in his own
home, was small although well supplied. Nowadays, that studio of
Franke's is hired to clients, as he owns other studios for his
private use.
From the albums of the period 1975-77, "Stratosfear" harvested
a popular success that crossed all borders of the followers of
electronic music, being widely listened to for several years in
discos, television ads and radio shows
The TD tour in 1977 throughout the USA awakened as well an
immense attraction among the American audience. As time went by,
TD moved to this country their main headquarters, partly due to
the undeniable advantages that for any artist having an
international success means the fact of moving around such areas
as Los Angeles or Hollywood, the world HQ of the recording and
movie industry, and partly because of the excellent success their
music had there. An obvious example of the latter is the
soundtrack that they created for the exhibition in the USA of the
movie "Legend" specially commissioned to them, instead of the
official one created by prestigious composer Jerry Goldsmith.

SPARE PARTS FOR THE MACHINERY
In the eighties, TD started a new stage. After Peter Baumann
parting, the short-lived contribution of Steve Jolliffe and Klaus
Krieger in the band ("Cyclone"), and their temporary reduction to
a duo formed by Froese and Franke ("Force Majeure"), Johannes
Schmoelling joined the team.In the first half of the eighties, the
period during which Schmoelling remained with TD, the band
experienced a new growth spur, reaching markets where their
previous works had not arrived at. The re-releases of old albums
started to appear again and again.
The movie soundtrack activity initiated in the late seventies
bloomed. This is the era of spectacular car chases, strong doses
of violence, and in general, situations with action and characters
in extremely dangerous circumstances, all that with the vibrant
sound of the music by TD. From movies like "Thief" to series like
"Street Hawk", the task done by TD also begand a new trend,
nowadays a very common one, of the very electronic movie
soundtracks for violent action movies and thrillers. They broke
with the belief that this kind of soundtracks could only function
with science fiction productions(a genre that, unfortunately, has
not used electronic music as often as it should have done, rather
frequently choosing the most classical and anti-futuristic
orchestral sorts of music). Although among the productions with a
soundtrack by TD, those of science fiction have constituted an
important percentage, and there has not been any, up to now, with
the commercial weight of, for instance, "Blade Runner", which
allowed Vangelis, its author, to shine as a creator of futuristic
atmospheres and prove to a wide audience the immense capability of
evocation that electronic music can have.
During the eighties, TD became even more prolific in several
areas besides that of the soundtracks. More albums, more
compilations, more tours. The style, except for the soundtracks,
became more compatible with the tastes of a wide sector of the
audience, that is to say, it approached more and more the currents
of pop, without necessarily entering the electronic fortress
constituted by techno. The avalanche of new electronic artists
that spawned in the eighties, and the progressive utilization of
synthesizers on the part of any sort of musician to the point of
defiling the meaning of the adjective "electronic" applied to a
genre, caused the stylistic classification of TD in the musical
panorama to lose their unique character. The boredom on the part
of some sectors of the audience, especially the German, before the
boom of Space Music in the seventies, as well as the competition
imposed by the new geniuses of the genre, led them to stray from
this and other labels, advancing throughout an amnbiguous terrain,
between pop and the avantgarde. This evolution was already
undeniable during the second half of the eighties.
The new formation of TD in 1986 consisted of Froese, Franke
and Paul Haslinger. The stability of other members in the band
apart from Froese and Franke appeared to be a cronic problem since
the leaving of Baumann.
In the late eighties, TD had ascended to the general stardom
realms of music. Then it was equally obvious that they had well
differentiated groups of fans. Basically, two: those who love the
more cosmic and avantgarde side of the band, well exploited during
the seventies and part of the eighties, and those who, near to
pop, find in TD a new, innovative trend in them, materialized from
the mid eighties, and one that has monopolized the activity of TD
in the nineties. The first sector feels deceived because of the
change in the steering of the band, whereas the second, which
knows next to nothing about the past of the band, enjoys their
present line. An example of this dual sort of fans, that in the
nineties polarized to astonishing extremes, is the anecdote that
happened to Edgar one morning. At seven a.m. somebody called at
his door. It was an individual carrying the LP of a soundtrack by
TD. Without uttering as much as a single word, this person broke
the record on his knee and left. As it seems, it was a fan who had
loathed the album and felt betrayed or conned by Froese. That was
his picturesque yet rotund way to express this.

(By Jorge Munnshe)


If you wish to purchase any recordings by these artists you only
have to use these links:

Tangerine Dream

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ts/artist-glance/131404/thesciencebookbo

Edgar Froese

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ts/artist-glance/42020/thesciencebookbo

Christopher Franke

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ts/artist-glance/125180/thesciencebookbo

Peter Baumann

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ts/artist-glance/157833/thesciencebookbo

Johannes Schmoelling

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ts/artist-glance/157413/thesciencebookbo

Paul Haslinger

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ts/artist-glance/94176/thesciencebookbo

Steve Schroyder

http://gemm.com/q.cgi?rb=AMAZINGS&artist=Steve+Schroyder

Steve Jolliffe

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ts/artist-glance/36405/thesciencebookbo

Klaus Schulze

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ts/artist-glance/123276/thesciencebookbo

Conrad Schnitzler

http://gemm.com/q.cgi?rb=AMAZINGS&artist=Conrad+Schnitzler

Michael Hoenig

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ts/artist-glance/54657/thesciencebookbo

====================

REVIEWS:

THOMAS GRUBERSKI:
"SPACETIME ADVENTURES"
Outline Records
Gruberski surprises us with this work due to its freshness and
simplicity, without implying commerciality or simple ideas.
"Spacetime Adventures" is punctuated with melodies that have their
sounds altered, especially with delaying effects, throughout the
same theme, as well as the excellent insertion of complete or
partial silences from which the piece acquires new shades. The use
of string sounds dominates the track, though these are always
supported on lines of bass and sequences, at times obscure, at
other times with a great luminosity. Perhaps the less brilliant
point is percussion, even though it reaches a high degree of
ellaboration in "Motion Diameter", where its conjunction with the
bass is practically perfect. This is, in fact, a work that reminds
us, in more than one passage, of the Jarre of the seventies, where
the themes not exceedengly long and perfectly structured by means
of transitions formed a conceptual whole whose parts one could
also enjoy separately.
LAURA S. GARCIA

REY:
"HIDDEN VIBRATIONS"
Hidden Vibrations is a special release. A paused whisper that
impresses the listener. Most of this work is found within a Space
Music line, where there is rhythm yet very calm, very contained.
Distorted voices, sequences, bass passages are found in plenty...
yet combined in such a delicate way that they hardly dominate over
one another, so that in the end, what is perceived in a clearest
way is their harmony, their complementary nature. Thus a dense
ambience is created, without becoming oppressive, throughout which
sensations of a certain strain and disquiet flow. In this sense,
the climax is reached with Exploring Mountains and Behind the
walls, where all the elements of the composition are equally
fundamental. On the other hand, the piece called "Silver" breaks
the general dynamics of the album, as in its sounds the listener
can appreciate traits from the techno pop of the eighties, though
these are utilized in a very personal manner. Rey has constructed
with all these aspects a very elaborate work of a style that
cannot be easily comparable to other existing ones.
LAURA S. GARCIA

MICHAEL JON FINK:
"I HEAR IT IN THE RAIN"
Cold Blue Music
In this album dominated by the piano, Michael Jon Fink has created
a series of meditative pieces, flowing along Classical Music,
Minimalism and Experimental.
EDUARDO FONTANA

MARTY WALKER:
"DANCING ON WATER"
Cold Blue Music
With production by Marty Walker and Jim Fox, this album of
clarinetist Marty Walker is a series of versions of pieces from
different composers (Michael Jon Fink, Daniel Lentz, Jim Fox,
Peter Garland, Michael Byron and Rick Cox), performed with the
personal style of Walker's.
EDUARDO FONTANA

If you wish to purchase any recordings by this artist you only
have to use this link:

http://gemm.com/q.cgi?rb=AMAZINGS&artist=MARTY+WALKER

====================

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