Search - Tangerine Dream :: Alpha Centauri

«Kosmische Musik» Classic

Steve Benner | Lancaster, UK | 09/20/2002

(4 out of 5 stars)

"The TD line-up at the time of "Alpha Centauri" was Edgar Froese, Christoph Franke (his first appearance) and Steve Schroyder (almost his last), with guest performers Udo Dennebourg (flute and voice) and Roland Paulyck (synthesiser). This remastered release on CD provides a whole new perspective on music that is as refreshing today as the day it was released, with nuances of the original now rescued from the obscurity of the muddy old black vinyl pressing.If you're unfamiliar with Tangerine Dream's early «Kosmische Musik» period, then this disc may come as something as a shock. It is, however, a good place to start an exploration of their early music. It contains an excellent cross-section of the styles of playing which characterised TD's early years, having meditative pieces with long drawn out organ chords over gurgling VCS3 oscillators, flighty flute lines woven through Christoph Franke's jazzy, often improvised drumming and, of course, a general other- or out-of-this-worldliness pervading everything. 'Sunrise in the Third System' is a short (4 mins) opener, which sets the scene for the music to follow. 'Fly and Collision of Comas Sola' is a longer (13 mins) epic, with more soaring, cosmic synthesiser sounds and organ chords over Froese's guitar strummings eventually being drowned out by a veritable battle between guest flautist, Udo Dennebourg, and Franke's increasingly frantic drumming -- a true masterpiece! The main work on the disc is the 22 minute title-track, featuring some fascinating dialogue between flute, electric guitar, organ, various warbling electronic devices (mostly spacey-type VCS3 settings but also including such non-musical sources as coffee machine) and finally human voice, in the form of wordless chant and (heavily processed) dialogue! This is an exquisite precursor to the follow-up album, "Zeit". As I mentioned earlier, this release has been remastered, allegedly from the original master tapes in TD's own Eastgate Studios. Be warned, however, that these tapes sound to be in a pretty dire state and one of the problems inherent in such remasterings is that as well as some details of the music being clearer, many of the defects become more exposed too! The opening moments of the disc, for example, have some appalling amplifier hum laid bare for all to hear and there are other moments throughout the disc when the original tapes sound to have saturated quite badly. That said, the sheer brilliance of this music soon drives such technical shortcomings from mind. (It helps to play the disc at a quieter level than normal too.) Personally, I would have liked some longer silences between the tracks, too: all we get are a couple of seconds-just not enough between tracks of this intensity! I was disappointed too that half of the original record sleeve art-work as well as the original sleeve-notes, such as they were, have not made it into this production, either. All in all, then, I feel that there are sufficient niggles for me to dock an entire star from my rating of this disc. Bear in mind, too, that in common with most records of this vintage, this disc contains not much more than 40 minutes of music (including the bonus track). I personally don't think that should put you off, of course, so go on, treat yourself!"