Search - Tangerine Dream :: The Best Of Tangerine Dream: The Blue Years

A disappointing collection!

Steve Benner | Lancaster, UK | 06/13/2000

(1 out of 5 stars)

"There are endless numbers of 'Best of Tangerine Dream' collections; selecting between them is often difficult and invariably confusing. It is not helped by the fact that the band has been contracted to so many different record companies over the years. Each label naturally feels it necessary to keep repackaging THEIR material as the best! Castle Communications/Essential Music has the rights to the band's output during two of their main periods: the "Pink Years" refers to their early 1970's pre-Virgin era, and covers the albums "Electronic Meditation", "Alpha Centauri", "Zeit", "Atem" and "Green Desert". The "Blue Years" covers the band's output immediately after their period with Virgin Records, when they signed with the now-defunct Jive Electro label. Tangerine Dream's "Blue Years" cover the band's output from the live "Poland" double-album of 1984, through to Chris Franke's farewell concert with the band in 1988, released on the "Live Miles" album. Also included are the three studio albums "Le Parc", "Underwater Sunlight" and "Tyger". The "Best of Tangerine Dream: Blue Years" collection has bleeding chunk extracts of 'Horizon' from "Poland" and 'Livemiles: the Albuquerque concert', and a couple of tracks from each of the other albums, but the selection is poor and hardly representative. Go for the "Dream Roots" collection instead, if you can afford it - much better value."

A less-than-brilliant 'best of' release

Steve Benner | Lancaster, UK | 06/01/2000

(1 out of 5 stars)

"This is a reasonable survey of Tangerine Dream's albums "Le Parc" and "Underwater Sunlight", with some chunks of "Poland", "Tyger" and "Livemiles" thrown in. It doesn't contain enough of any of these albums to be worth having, though, nor is it sufficiently representative (especially of "Poland" or "Tyger") to be a useful way of finding out whether or not the full albums are worth having! Personally, I'd recommend putting the money towards copies of "Livemiles" and "Poland", if you don't have those. Or, if you're interested in the "Tyger", "Le Parc" and "Underwater Sunlight" tracks, go for the 5-CD "Dream Roots Collection" instead. It is more expensive, obviously, but it has a better mix of tracks than here, (from the same albums) and has some otherwise unavailable tracks on it too."