After being consigned to almost half a century of burial by time and dust, a long lost critical Tangerine Dream album has finally seen the light of day!
5 CommentsTags: 1970s, 2019, Ambient, christopher franke, edgar froese, electronic, germany, lost album, peter baumann, steven wilson, tangerine dream
Unfolding shades of black, subtle contrasts between rhythmic assaults, dark ambiance and harmonic consonance are some of the factors that provide inspiration in this imposing soundtrack, which was designed to be programmatic and visually arousing by necessity.
10 CommentsTags: Batman, bill ward, Dark Knight, Hans Zimmer, tangerine dream
One genre which often attracts the admiration of Metal musicians is Electronica. When musicians from Germany, France and elsewhere began experimenting in the third quarter of the 20th century with various newfound technologies in order to create monumental landscapes of synthetic psychedelia with cosmic scope, the uncanny wave of influence unexpectedly resulted in the arising of everything from the modern club scene to many of your favourite Black Metal bands.
Tags: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, Ambient, ash ra tempel, ashra, brian eno, canada, cinema, classical music, conrad schnitzler, Cosmic, drugs, edgar froese, electronic, electronic music, electronica, film, film score, france, futuristic, germany, greece, jean-michel jarre, keyboards, Klaus Schulze, kraftwerk, krautrock, manuel gottsching, michael hoeing, michael stearns, progressive rock, Romanticism, science fiction, sinoia caves, Soundtracks, space, steve roach, surrealism, synth, synthesizers, synthpop, tangerine dream, terry riley, UK, USA
On the Black Mirror episode Bandersnatch, the young programmer protagonist, under the instructions of an Aldous Huxley inspired game developer, has the option of picking up a record by Tangerine Dream – Phaedra. As the young programmer and the viewer struggle with paradox in order to finish his game, we find a chance to do a casual DMU reflection on the parallels between metal and game programming, madness and the collapse of western civilization by substituting learning for entertainment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URssLwPXkVk
11 CommentsTags: Bandersnatch, Black Mirror, cannibal corpse, convergence, Creativity, cryptopsy, de mysteriis dom sathanas, Dead, divergence, Euronymous, gorguts, Jon Levasseur, Luc Lemay, mayhem, Phaedra, plasticity, psychology, tangerine dream
With the fiftieth anniversary of metal music around the corner, forthcoming years will witness an increase of publications dealing with the history, legacy and defining characteristics of the genre. This could finally resolve the lack of consensus that still exists regarding the definition and origins of heavy metal.
25 CommentsTags: Ambient, article, black sabbath, cream, electronic, Genesis, hard rock, Heavy Metal, heavy metal history, heavy rock, metal history, origins of heavy metal, progressive electronic music, progressive rock, proto-metal, psychedelic rock, punk, tangerine dream, the stooges
If you’ve been following the site for a bit, you’ll note how Khand is a treasure trove for ambient/”cosmic” music lovers that has earned a nice reputation on our site for their previous studio albums. A few months back, this one man act mentioned it was simultaneously working on two albums for future release. Crimson, from which the provided track hails, is a science fiction concept album revolving around a hypothetical manned space mission to Mars. While it’s too early to say for sure whether or not this will live up to previous Khand albums, a teaser track is still an important milestone on the way to an official release.
Some of Khand’s work is available for download here.
2 CommentsTags: 2016, ambient music, crimson, khand, tangerine dream, upcoming release
The most immediate comparisons E-Musikgruppe Lux Ohr will attract are to Tangerine Dream and other “cosmic” bands of the 1970s, but while the technique of this trancelike electronic waveform fits that description, its composition reflects on something more like the “chill-out” albums of the middle 1980s.
Kometenbahn uses many of the same samples and sounds as old Tangerine Dream. The Moog keyboards intermix with the highly sequenced percussive synthesizer that keeps time, and lengthy and intricate guitar solos use the same distortion and tuning. Even the studio sound is very similar.
How E-Musikgruppe Lux Ohr differs from the cosmic musicians however is in structure. This music is built more like the 1980s techno and chill-out albums, like the KLF’s album titled after the genre, than the 1970s bands. The electronic acts of the 1970s had a lot more in common with progressive rock, and so structured each song around either a set classical form, or as an adaptation to the content being expressed.
In contrast, more like the 80s material Kometenbah is composed in layers shaped around a central circular structure. This is not verse-chorus, but more linear, with the idea that one alternating pattern attracts others and then variations are made to those to tweak intensity and build up an experience of their atmosphere and immersion of mood.
This album offers powerful stuff to those who love ambient music. It is a feast of sounds, textures and rhythms. While it does not use the cosmic song forms of Tangerine Dream and friends, it produces a more contemporary atmosphere of suspension of disbelief and exploration of not a labyrinth, but deepening detail of an intensely ornate and beautiful object.
4 Comments
