“Further into the details, you can clearly hear the first steps of Rubycon and Phaedra”
1 Genesis 5:57
2 Journey Through a Burning Brain 12:32
3 Cold Smoke 10:48
4 Ashes to Ashes 3:58
5 Resurrection 3:21
LP ORH OMM 56004
Castle CD: ESMCD345
(CD 36:36) (V.F.)
(Experimental, Abstract)
Finally you will say, Phaedream decides to review the first works of Tangerine Dream! Composed since the formation of the Dream, ELECTRONIC MEDITATION is everything but an electronic music album. In fact, it could be described as the first electronic punk album, which was originally a pure jam session in a disused factory in Berlin in the fall of 1969. Sensing the likelihood of a German Pink Floyd, Ohr's managers made it the very first Tangerine Dream album.
A sonic bric-a-brac that wallows in a psychedelic tumult with astonishing melodic passages. Deviant organ layers on percussions as random as celestial, Conrad Schnitzer's cello bites into the very ambient and floating opening of Genesis. Here, the rhythm is absent, the music abstract. A quintet searching and tuning its instruments before an avalanche of percussion hits the psychedelic aboriginal rhythm of Genesis which becomes heavier, despite the beautiful flute of Thomas Keyserling. Journey Through a Burning Brain kicks into gear on the cacophonous Genesis finale. Here, Edgar Froese explores the sounds of his guitars. A track that becomes more poetic with a very Floyd flavor and an organ that fits Froese's incisive strings. Hallucinatory and quite incoercible after a good firecracker! The ambient sounds oscillating between the undulating organ layers that straighten up in ghostly sinuosity, Journey Through A Burning Brain blazes on a supple and discordant rhythm where the guitars spit a rock venom on a surprising percussions play from Klaus Schulze while the flute establishes a jungle climate. Totally crazy, but surprisingly attractive, Journey Through A Burning Brain is the equal of Pink Floyd's cult album Ummagumma sessions. Cold Smoke is hallucinatory smoke worthy of an LSD hit. A dulcet intro with a soaring organ, the track is constantly stultified by dry strings from a delirious violin and a demonic Schulze on drums, while the organ always remains placidly in tune with a lonely quest. Strange and anti-musical, there are still some good passages, especially when Froese's solos tear a wall of steel in an innovative pre-progressive delirium. To be tamed slowly... Ashes to Ashes is a kind of psychedelic blues, triturated by the Machiavellian mind of Conrad Schnitzler, excellent in the art of shaping strange sound effects. Resurrection closes the loop with a very pastoral intro that floats in vocal delirium before taking up a sinuous and lazy heaviness inspired by Genesis' intro.
ELECTRONIC MEDITATION is not an easy album to tame. One would say to me that it is a symphonic cacophony that I would agree. On the other hand, you can clearly feel the influence of Pink Floyd from the A Saucerful of Secrets era to Ummagumma. But further into the details, you can clearly hear the first steps of Rubycon and Phaedra.
Sylvain Lupari (May 26th, 2009) *****
Available at Groove nl