by Mott the Dog
re-mastered By Ella Crew
4
Stars Rating ****
After the relative success of Alpha Centauri, Tangerine
Dream were soon back in the studio to record their third album. The
underground music scene, now suitably impressed, waited for the band’s
next move.
So Dream main man Edgar Froese did what he always did -
and again changed the line-up.
Organist Steve Schroyder was fired for freaking out
once too often. Schroyder promptly joined fellow Krautrockers Ash Ra
Tempel where freaking out was par for the course. Their ‘Seven Up’
album was an acid-spiked cosmic trip lead by the hallucinogenic guru
himself Dr. Timothy Leary.
To replace the talented Schroyder, Froese drafted in
the equally gifted Peter Baumann who had been playing organ in a band
called The Ants. The fact that he was also a fan of surrealist fine art,
which was a passion of Froese, might well have helped.
With Baumann in place on a kind of come-and-go basis,
the most stable and creative of the many Tangerine Dream line-ups was in
place - and for the next five years would take electronic music to new
mind-altering heights.
After the electronic rock-based format of the first two
albums, what came next was a total surprise. Their new opus was a double
album with one track per side. Zeit was not an album you could freak out
to. It almost seemed that nothing was happening - no thrashing drums or
screaming psychedelic guitars, just lots of strange pulsating synths and a
few creepy cellos.
Zeit, which means ‘time’, was based on the strange
if somewhat pretentious philosophy that time was in fact motionless and
only existed in our own minds. To many people in the early 1970s who were
listening to the likes of Leary this was probably a perfectly rational
explanation, although some of the less than enthusiastic reviewers would
have liked a bit more rock and roll with their time.
Holed up once more in The Dierks studio in Cologne, the
band enlisted the help of a cello quartet, which included members of the
medieval folk group olderin, and the call also went out to Schroyder to
join the sessions.
The first track, or movement, is the splendidly titled
‘Birth of Liquid Plejades’, an epic soundscape that slowly wakes and
emerges from the speakers as a drone of cellos. For seven minutes the
quartet play a tuneless dirge that occasionally changes and is entwined
with a slowly oscillating synthesizer.
The cellos give way to several minutes of classic
Tangerine Dream, courtesy of the big Moog synthesizer which is played by
Florian Fricke from the group Popol Vuh. His haunting lines are backed by
a somber organ which eventually rises to take over proceedings.
The Moog was a vastly expensive piece of equipment that
resembled a small telephone exchange, and it required a serious amount of
knowledge and patience to make it work. It obviously impressed Franke as
it soon became part of his on-stage set up and he was never seen without
it.
A few seconds short of 20 minutes, the piece ends with
the organ gradually fading into the ether. It’s almost as if the
engineer had said ‘that’s enough’, as I am sure the musicians could
have just carried on and on.
‘Nebulous Dawn’ sounds like it was recorded in the
bowels of some vast electrical power station. Dark slowly brooding synths
fade in and out and occasionally build in speed and volume. Then at around
the six-minute mark there is a brief snatch of the pulsating rhythms that
will define so many of their future releases. Perhaps Franke had finally
got the hang of the Moog only to lose it again before the return of the
strange industrial noises that bubble and vibrate their way through the
most non-musical piece the band had yet recorded.
The usually dominant guitar playing of Froese at last
makes an appearance during the beginning of the third movement, Origin of
Supernatural Possibilities. He barely strums the strings for a few brief
minutes before an almost living synthesized pulse fills the room - this is
headphone music par excellence. It’s as if some vast primitive amoeba is
crawling in the basement trying to escape. It isn’t, of course, but if
you were on acid in a Berlin bedsit in 1972 it must have come pretty
close.
The amoeba makes a couple more attempts to get out
before giving way to the almost soothing drones of the cellos or more
synths, or some ancient sound generator put through an old echo unit?
Sometimes it is difficult to tell what is making the strange ghostly
noises that bring this living collage to a close.
The album ends with the title track, which also points
the way ahead with several ideas and sounds, that both the band and Froese
as a solo artist would later use. It’s also the track during which
almost nothing changes, gentle drones gradually drift in and out
punctuated by the occasional high pitched squeal.
Zeit is where the whole of time stands still, the
theory actually sounding credible. Just as something is about to happen,
it doesn’t. Then 17 minutes have gone by and the piece is over.
As an album, Zeit can be played over and over and still
never be fully heard. It sounds slightly different every time, which is
possibly the notion Froese, Franke and Baumann had during a timeless ten
days in Cologne.
The cover artwork is once again a combined Froese
effort. Edgar’s total eclipse continues his fascination with the
universe, while his wife Monique’s strangely disturbing photography
always seemed to suit the mood of the album.
Without doubt Zeit is a Krautrock master work still
capable of surprises without having to shock. The album which took the
band to the edge of international recognition, still sounds timeless 30
years on.
Musicians
1. Birth Of Liquid Plejades
2. Nebulous Dawn
3. Origin Of Supernatural Probabilities
4. Zeit
Architect
Barry Bell has written and photographed a new book on the nation’s
capital, Bangkok. Called Bangkok - Angelic Allusions (ISBN 1-86189-157-1),
and from the outset, let me assure you it is like no other book on
Bangkok, and goodness knows there have been plenty! It was written during
2002 and published this year through a UK publishing house and was printed
in China.
Well
this is the third and last movie in the trilogy; these movies were never
easy to understand and this one is the most difficult of all. Too many
loose strings, nothing makes sense, and a lot of boring, complicated
talking.
Mott’s CD review: Tangerine Dream - Zeit