Zeit

Tangerine Dream: Edgar Froese, Chris Franke, Peter Baumann.Additional personnel: Steve Schroyder (organ); Florian Fricke (Moog synthesizer); The Cologne Cello Quartett.Recorded at Dierks Studios, Cologne, Germany in 1972. Includes liner notes by Paul Russell.Digitally remastered by Thomas Heimann-Trosien (Eastgate Studios, Vienna, Austria 1995).Recording information: Dierks' Studios (1972).Photographer: Monique Froese.Unknown Contributor Roles: Edgar Froese; Christopher Franke; Peter Baumann.On its first two albums, pioneering electronic Krautrock group Tangerine Dream made clear its intention to use SAUCERFUL OF SECRETS-era Pink Floyd as a jumping-off point for the band's cosmic explorations. While T. Dream was never anyone's idea of a rock band, the first two albums do feature electric guitar and drums used prominently in a way that at least tips its hat to the rock aesthetic. On ZEIT, the group moves definitively away from rock trappings into purely atmospheric, improvised electronics, creating soundscapes alternately ambient and avant-garde.A key factor in this process was the solidification of the personnel. Synthesist Peter Baumann completed the trio lineup that would remain intact for the next five years and create the bulk of what's regarded as the group's classic work. For most of ZEIT, conventional melody and harmony are abandoned completely in favor of pure electronic textures. Things build slowly as waves of analog synth and heavily processed guitar ebb and flow in these largely rhythmless arrangements. Occasional melodic colors do appear in the form of a cello quartet, and the subtly elegant majesty of the group's constantly mutating sonic paintings makes ZEIT sound like the soundtrack to an odd-but-memorable dream.TD's purest expression of "space music," this double album ebbs and flows effortlessly from one tone cluster to another. Almost classical in construction, the music is structured so as to evolve in sections as one theme literally melts into the next. Florian Fricke (of Popol Vuh) played the big Moog on this album and the overall texture of the electronics is warm and shimmering. [This is the 2003 reissue, remastered with new liner notes and photos.] ~ Archie Patterson

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