Tangerine Dream

sparrow wrote:Strange that there are hardly any Cyclone tracks included on TD compilations..Only one I can think of is 70 - 80 box.

Yes John, it's got Madrigal Meridian on it (but without the excellent intro).... the one truly great track of Cyclone, for me.

Around the 10 minute mark of Madrigal Meridian when the sequencers kick in with Edgars Guitar its just dynamite

Yeah, that's quite strange. Even on "Tangents" ... every Virgin album was included with at least one or two compositions, but "Cyclone" was missing completely.
That makes you think what Edgar Froese may think of this album.

I think it's WAY too underrated. The three compositions may not be the best ones TD ever wrote, but I enjoy this album very much. Some parts of "Bent Cold Sidewalk" may be a bit too hippie-esk (considering what was going on with Punk Rock at the same time!), but I have no problem with that.
I guess "Cyclone" simply came at the wrong time, a TD electronic prog rock album must have seemed dated then. And as I wrote elsewhere I don't mind the vocals at all. They're quite nice and somehow very strange ... something completely different.

epsilon75 wrote:Around the 10 minute mark of Madrigal Meridian when the sequencers kick in with Edgars Guitar its just dynamite

Yes Colin, I always have to turn up the volume when it gets to that point and the drums sound great aswell. I guess the remastered CD would sound better than the original CD release that I've got so I usually play the LP from the 70-80 boxset.

MrCox wrote:Yeah, that's quite strange. Even on "Tangents" ... every Virgin album was included with at least one or two compositions, but "Cyclone" was missing completely.
That makes you think what Edgar Froese may think of this album.

I think it's WAY too underrated. The three compositions may not be the best ones TD ever wrote, but I enjoy this album very much. Some parts of "Bent Cold Sidewalk" may be a bit too hippie-esk (considering what was going on with Punk Rock at the same time!), but I have no problem with that.
I guess "Cyclone" simply came at the wrong time, a TD electronic prog rock album must have seemed dated then. And as I wrote elsewhere I don't mind the vocals at all. They're quite nice and somehow very strange ... something completely different.

Edgar's thoughts on Cyclone (once again from Inkey$ 10 'audio tape' magazine):

DE-"Meanwhile back at the hotel Jeanette asked about Peter Baumann's decision to leave the band and the arrival of Steve Jolliffe and Klaus Krieger for the Cyclone album and subsequent tour."

EF-"The problem simply was that we could not for some reason agree to some decisions Peter Baumann made in 77 and (it) was shortly after the second part of the American tour. He wanted to live in New York and then he wanted to do that; and wanted to do that. He had a certain type of lifestyle which is totally the opposite of our one, which is ok, we did respect that and we were together for about 6 years, and so a lot of things went fine, some others didn't. But when we split it, there was a .recording session announced, there was a release date of a record, there was tour planned. So there were not so many choices to go with. So I did know Steve from 66-67-68, sometime around this period and I know he is a very fine musician and a fine character and so I thought let's call him, let's get him into the band. He plays keyboards as well (it) shouldn't be any problem with a good musician you can improvise right away and Chris did know Klaus (Krieger). So we brought them into the band, so ok let's have a rehearsal session for a couple of months. Ok once again the truth. The thing was when we produced Cyclone, I've never said that before, but anyway, we made all the ground tracks which we didn't want to make. We wanted to make a piece of music the same way we did before, you know?. Sit down and improvise, but because we did not know so well each other, we just had basic tracks all the time. We could do what ever we liked (but) we were always running into basic tracks!. Everybody said 'Ok that's tracks, it's like somebody wants to sing on it!' and we said no it's not possible, you're crazy! we never use words. But because of that pressure we had from all angles then one day I remember Steve came into the studio and said 'look, I wrote some lyrics, I don't know if-blah, blah, blah', I said ok try it, but sorry we definitely don't use it, but try it. It was a very delicate situation and he did and he tried and it least was a mixture of being suppressed by time factors and not knowing what to do (or) where to go; and so in the end it turned out to be halfway what we wanted. But the Cyclone record it's still one of those pieces of music where we are still totally unsure about!"

CF-“It was an exception”

EF-“Totally an exception”

CF-"There are a lot of people which only like one album of Tangerine Dream, that's Cyclone”

EF-“That’s correct”

CF-“I mean it's an experiment which was a half failure. But it was an experiment and we had not tried doing experiments and it was maybe such as Paul McCartney maybe would do experiments doing a song without vocals."

(General laughter)

I very fine musician and a fine character,obviously EF had plenty of respect for Steve

sparrow wrote:Strange that there are hardly any Cyclone tracks included on TD compilations..Only one I can think of is 70 - 80 box.

well enough by me. would you like it tangenitized?

MAD rigal Meridian : the sound of a runaway train


easily one of tangerine : dreams most agressive and pointedly potent track


Cyclone today rates a BIGMOOG tee ee en

Rico wrote:

sparrow wrote:Strange that there are hardly any Cyclone tracks included on TD compilations..Only one I can think of is 70 - 80 box.

well enough by me. would you like it tangenitized?

bananarama is OK by me - sometimes it works (Dreams Roots Disc 1) other times it falls flat on its arze (Song of the Whale Pt 2 - Dream Roots Collection). The Messenger [DM4] - in effect a remix of Rising Runner sans vocals - is extremely effective.

Yeah, I almost forgot about that one. I LOVE "Messenger", this track really rocks!

MrCox wrote:Yeah, I almost forgot about that one. I LOVE "Messenger", this track really rocks!

Yes this was a very pleasent surprise when i heard this on DM4,i very good re-working IMHO

epsilon75 wrote:

MrCox wrote:Yeah, I almost forgot about that one. I LOVE "Messenger", this track really rocks!

Yes this was a very pleasent surprise when i heard this on DM4,i very good re-working IMHO

IMHO probably better than some of the stuff on Cyclone

It always seemed to me that the entire album gets trashed by so many people merely because it has vocals on it. They seem to forget that one entire side of the album is purely instrumental (and IMO very much on par with "Force Majeure"), plus "Bent Cold Sidewalk" has a great instrumental break with vocals only at the beginning and end. The only real throwaway track is "Rising Runner" and at only 4 minutes, you're not losing very much if you skip that one altogether. Musically, the album is still very much the TD you would expect of the period, so it's easy to overlook the vocals. Not only that, the lyrics are kind of abstract and surreal anyway, so they aren't a bad fit for the music.

Sfearical Sequence wrote:It always seemed to me that the entire album gets trashed by so many people merely because it has vocals on it. They seem to forget that one entire side of the album is purely instrumental (and IMO very much on par with "Force Majeure"), plus "Bent Cold Sidewalk" has a great instrumental break with vocals only at the beginning and end. The only real throwaway track is "Rising Runner" and at only 4 minutes, you're not losing very much if you skip that one altogether. Musically, the album is still very much the TD you would expect of the period, so it's easy to overlook the vocals. Not only that, the lyrics are kind of abstract and surreal anyway, so they aren't a bad fit for the music.

Rising Runner is a disgusting song and is solid proof that everything of the Virgin Years was not golden, IMHO.

I still don't appreciate Madrigal Meridian the way others on this forum do. The only track that gets any real airplay here, is Bent Cold Sidewalk. It has a great "prog" feel and suits SJ's vocals perfectly. The instrumental break is one of my favourite TD passages.