On this day: 1978

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30 years ago to the day, Tangerine Dream were playing a concert at the Palais des Congres, in Dijon, France.

TANGERINE DREAM

DIJON: With the drastic change in the line-up of Tangerine Dream, the final departure of Peter Baumann, and his replacement by drummer Klaus Krieger and English keyboard and woodwind player Steve Jolliffe, a certain tack of co-ordination between the old and new members of what is now a quartet might have been forgivable.

However, judging by their performance at this provincial French concert, their problems, If any, lie in a rather opposite direction. Because French elections have commandeered most of the available halls, the concert had to be held in something rather like an aircraft hanger, completely lacking in the sort of atmospherics associated with Tangerine Dream music.

The low roof also Interfered seriously with the operation of the famous American Laserium show, but since lasers are becoming a bit of a bore in general, and I prefer to listen to Dream music with my eyes closed, this latter problem didn't bother me. I don't know if it was the unsympathetic vibe of the place, but the band seemed much less outgoing than In the past. They seemed to turn Inwards, possibly for some kind of reassurance.

Of course, the semi-darkness in which they perform always makes it difficult to distinguish who is playing what, and in fact there was some selectively subtle spotlighting of the drummer much of the time. When Jolliffe came out front to play some solos on the Lyricon, a horn synthesizer which has also been played by Wayne Shorter, he Also was picked out with a gentle spot.

Jolliffe's contribution seemed to be the most effective. In fact. The last time the band added drums, on their remixed "live" "Ricochet" album, I thought the result was something of a disaster. and though Krieger is an accomplished performer, music of this subtlety really doesn't seem to me to need the underpinning of rather obvious rock rhythms, even if it does make it slightly more palatable to the masses who may still be put off by T. Dream's somewhat forbidding Image.

For much of the show, the band seemed to concentrate on building up atmosphere, and were successful in doing so. But it was the first time when what they played sounded to me like "space music", with all the hackneyed cliché potential that this Implies. Perhaps one should write this off as the wrong gig in the wrong place, and hope for better things on their British tour.

KARL DALLAS