Archive of the former Yahoo!Groups mailing list: Mellotronists

<< Re-evaluating my vinyl collection has led to discover an absolute gem -
"Epsilon in Malaysian Pale" by Edgar Froese of Tangerine Dream. Anyone here
have
it? Made in 1975 on Virgin, it's a real find. >>

it's difficult to find on cd, but I have one that was made from the vinyl and
declicked through one of gordon's magic boxes. ditto rubycon (better than the
official cd version, either of them) and "overture" from the virgin
compilation album, V.

I think, actually, that the tape-set edgar froese used on the follow-ups aqua
& ages resides here now. epsilon is the one to have though- the influence of
his fellow TD-ers can't really be felt, but at the same time he stays away
from the techniques, if one can call them that, he used with TD.

the later solo efforts rely too much on froese's rather inadequate skills as
a member of TD while epsilon is a hint of what he could have achieved had he
played to his strengths as a sound-sculptor. now he dicks around with the old
tapes before reissuing them, aswell as laying claim to the many fan-recordings
& exorbitantly repackaging them. some of these multi-disc sets are being sold
back to the people who recorded them. one is a direct copy of a BBC recording
that he hasn't licensed from them.

not that I know a damn thing about that part of TD's history... ;-)

the one(s) to get, for a beginner, are in this order: rubycon, ricochet,
phaedra, encore, sorcerer... work out either way chronologically from those
depending on taste. fwiw, I go as far back as the 2nd album (electronic meditation
just isn't either of those things) and up to thief but only because it's such a
daft movie. things got a bit too digital after that.

sideways, & besides the aforementioned froese efforts, baumann's solo effort
of 1977 has some nice moments (esp. the work with his dad). he squeezed out
another, weaker effort before packing it in to run a label, which (full circle)
the later incarnation of TD (featuring former cover-star jerome himself)
ended up signed to.
chris franke didn't really get off the marks until later solo-wise, and his
work is the least-different from mid-70s TD output. this may or may not be an
appealing aspect of it. he was also the most competent musician ever to serve i
n the TD ranks, by some distance.
michael hoenig, who was brought on as substitute for baumann in 1976, never
really got around to developing any compositional skills, nor did he quite
grasp that some sort of narrative thread can be created, and is essential to
instrumental music. shame- he had the chops.

klause schulze deserves passing mention in this context- he drummed on the
first album (E.M.) but switched to keyboards for his prodigious solo output,
which is... variable... he was more a fan of the emerging polysynth technology
than of the 'tron, but bits sneaked in here & there. there's a "live" set from
warsaw which is actually a very messed-up schulze augmenting some backing tapes
by hitting whatever keys he manages to get in focus for a few seconds.
hilarious. I wish he'd stayed in TD- he might've lightened the mood a bit &, who
knows, maybe even got them socialising with each other.....

duncan/1098 (pale & interesting)