Tangerine Dream

We've all seen many reviews and reviewers suggesting that TD were once at the cutting edge of EM (an ambiguous term but we all know what it means), but that those days are long gone. Whether we agree or not, what makes me wonder is this...

...what sort of music would these reviewers like TD to be producing these days, in order for them to still be seen at the perceived cutting edge of EM?

Perhaps in order to answer with any degree of accuracy, we need to judge who actually IS at this cutting edge these days. Future Sound Of London? Orbital? Goldfrapp even? Kraftwerk? In fact, is ANYONE at this cutting edge these days? IS there such an edge anymore? Any suggestions anyone? And if so, would we all be happy if TD sounded like FSOL?

The natural development of EM seems to have come to an end in many ways, hence the move into a retro sound by so many artists. They say that a culture starts to repeat itself when it can go no further. Is it possible to develop EM any further? It's development is partly dictated by technology, so how can technology help in developing EM into 2009?

Or do we even care that TD are no longer at the cutting edge, so long as they're producing good music?

I prefer TD to sound like TD. Not so much bothered about 'cutting edge' so long as the music stands up and right now TD are on a roll with a prolific and varied output of a consistantly high quality, a stunningly fresh approach (cup discs and special edition concert EP's exclusive to every concert).

In my opinion there is very little TD releases today that should have been left on the cutting room floor

Regarding who is at the cutting edge these days, I can't even answer that one

I think people like Brian Eno could still be considered cutting edge... not so much for his technology, but the advanced nature of his musical compositions.

I would rate Bjork and Goldfrapp in that category too. I even really rated Kate Bush's last album.

Technology wise, there would need to be more development in the industry for people to be making the leaps and bounds TD were making in their heyday. There seems to be a lot of advancement in interfaces and software, but everything is making the same sounds they were a decade ago.

As for TD - how many bands have tackled the Dante Trilogy (love it or hate it) and are embarking on a suite to mark the Nagasaki and Hiroshima bombs? At least Edgar and Co. aren't just resting and churning out the same old stuff all the time.

Cutting edge though? Probably not in my book at the moment.

I cannot reply, there is a spelling mistake in the title of this thread

Ah, you have a keen eye Mr Bond. Egde is actually an underused word, an Anglo-Saxon derivation of the original Greek Edgae (meaning 'leader'), which is from the Hyperborean word Edgar, meaning 'he who is without peer'.

The cutting edge of music is gone, as soon as joe public could buy (almost) the same equipment as (insert your favourite group here), it was over, finished...dead and buried.

The term 'the cutting edge' is now used by lazy journalists to describe whatever they prefer this week, whether that is based on laptops, 30 year old antique synths or the latest off the shelf virtual (nothing like it) synth software. Its use these days is about as fluid as partly cooked scrabbled eggs and just as pallatable.

Only musos and a few frustrated old hacks worry about it these days, everyone else is far to busy buying and enjoying the music.

yet another term for the dustbin of music history?

I agree with andy


and also exit81

I'll add, that the only time 'recently' when I've said, 'Wow, that's a great idea' (regarding music), was when TD said they were using a system where sounds were downloaded live in concert from thier studio in Berlin, wherever in the world they were via ISDN. No idea if TD ever used it in practice (rumour has it, it had been thoroughly tested and it did work). Good idea though, if you wanted to reduce the amount of equipment onstage. I'll make a wild guess that today's hard-drives are so big that they made that technology out of date within a very short period

24db wrote:I'll add, that the only time 'recently' when I've said, 'Wow, that's a great idea' (regarding music), was when TD said they were using a system where sounds were downloaded live in concert from thier studio in Berlin, wherever in the world they were via ISDN. No idea if TD ever used it in practice (rumour has it, it had been thoroughly tested and it did work). Good idea though, if you wanted to reduce the amount of equipment onstage. I'll make a wild guess that today's hard-drives are so big that they made that technology out of date within a very short period

Weird. I can't imagine a scenario where that ever would have been advantageous. Some instruments, like the Emulator, had floppy disc drives to store sound samples. Fairlights had gobs of storage. Unless by "sounds" you mean album-length pre-recorded tracks in a PCM format that might have required several gigabytes of storage that they didn't have at their disposal. But then to download that much data quickly would require incredible speeds and vast amounts of bandwidth.

Didn't FSOL do something similar with the ISDN CD, not sure if this was before or after TD though. I'll admit to not knowing evry much about music technology, but from the musician's point of view, wouldn't it be more stable and risk-free if the samples were stored on a hard drive and physically taken to the concert. You can get enormous hard drives now (all about the size of a book) and the price has fallen so much in last 5 year. I'm assuming ISDN connections can fail like any other connection, which wouldn't be ideal halfway through performing TD's latest opus on stage.

Agree with you though Andy....I think EM's reached a point now where it simply can't develop anymore. It was always driven by technology and the latest advancements in synths. So when music technology reached a level where you could do pretty much anything soundwise, it was almost a case of 'where do we go from here?' The cutting edge stalled, and has faded away in a mish mash of varying styles and attempts at retro. Technology seemingly can't do much more, it's now solely down to artistry to develop progressive styles that rely more on compositional skills and approaches rather than letting the technology dictate the artists direction.

Sfearical Sequence wrote:

24db wrote:I'll add, that the only time 'recently' when I've said, 'Wow, that's a great idea' (regarding music), was when TD said they were using a system where sounds were downloaded live in concert from thier studio in Berlin, wherever in the world they were via ISDN. No idea if TD ever used it in practice (rumour has it, it had been thoroughly tested and it did work). Good idea though, if you wanted to reduce the amount of equipment onstage. I'll make a wild guess that today's hard-drives are so big that they made that technology out of date within a very short period

Weird. I can't imagine a scenario where that ever would have been advantageous. Some instruments, like the Emulator, had floppy disc drives to store sound samples. Fairlights had gobs of storage. Unless by "sounds" you mean album-length pre-recorded tracks in a PCM format that might have required several gigabytes of storage that they didn't have at their disposal. But then to download that much data quickly would require incredible speeds and vast amounts of bandwidth.

This was when Samplers had a woeful amount of memory, 128MB max? so the avantage was that the sounds were downloaded into the sampler, triggered and then dumped, during the concert.

I'm not talking about Fairlights or Emulators as they were years before this

exit81 wrote:Didn't FSOL do something similar with the ISDN CD, not sure if this was before or after TD though. I'll admit to not knowing evry much about music technology, but from the musician's point of view, wouldn't it be more stable and risk-free if the samples were stored on a hard drive and physically taken to the concert. You can get enormous hard drives now (all about the size of a book) and the price has fallen so much in last 5 year. I'm assuming ISDN connections can fail like any other connection, which wouldn't be ideal halfway through performing TD's latest opus on stage.

Agree with you though Andy....I think EM's reached a point now where it simply can't develop anymore. It was always driven by technology and the latest advancements in synths. So when music technology reached a level where you could do pretty much anything soundwise, it was almost a case of 'where do we go from here?' The cutting edge stalled, and has faded away in a mish mash of varying styles and attempts at retro. Technology seemingly can't do much more, it's now solely down to artistry to develop progressive styles that rely more on compositional skills and approaches rather than letting the technology dictate the artists direction.

the FSOL thing was totally different, they were just playing the studio and broadcasting the results live. A similar system was used by Chris Franke when his Berlin orchestra was recording in his studio, transmitted over ISDN to his Hollywood studio complex. The technology used is probably very out of date now.

24db wrote:

Sfearical Sequence wrote:

24db wrote:I'll add, that the only time 'recently' when I've said, 'Wow, that's a great idea' (regarding music), was when TD said they were using a system where sounds were downloaded live in concert from thier studio in Berlin, wherever in the world they were via ISDN. No idea if TD ever used it in practice (rumour has it, it had been thoroughly tested and it did work). Good idea though, if you wanted to reduce the amount of equipment onstage. I'll make a wild guess that today's hard-drives are so big that they made that technology out of date within a very short period

Weird. I can't imagine a scenario where that ever would have been advantageous. Some instruments, like the Emulator, had floppy disc drives to store sound samples. Fairlights had gobs of storage. Unless by "sounds" you mean album-length pre-recorded tracks in a PCM format that might have required several gigabytes of storage that they didn't have at their disposal. But then to download that much data quickly would require incredible speeds and vast amounts of bandwidth.

This was when Samplers had a woeful amount of memory, 128MB max? so the avantage was that the sounds were downloaded into the sampler, triggered and then dumped, during the concert.

I'm not talking about Fairlights or Emulators as they were years before this

It just seems that that would have required an incredibly reliable (not to mention fast) network to pull that off. As you say, they tested it, but I wonder how well it would have held up for the duration of a concert.

In my opinion TD stopped being cutting edge mid 80's. Nowadays Autechre is cutting edge. The next big thing is probably the combination of "classical music" and electronic (dance) music, symphonies and piano concertos with drum 'n' bass loops etc.

TD and the cutting egde of EM

is td em???