Alpha Centauri [Original recording remastered]

Tangerine Dream | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (February 22, 2000)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Original recording remastered
• Label: Castle - Old Numbers
• ASIN: B00004C4L2
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #306,869 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. Sunrise in the Third System - Tangerine Dream

2. Fly and Collision of Comas Sola - Tangerine Dream

3. Alpha Centauri - Tangerine Dream

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Pompous symphonic schwung, October 30, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Alpha Centauri (Audio CD)

After Froese and Schulze parted company in 1970, the band was lucky to find a replacement in Christopher Franke, an extremely talented musician, who will be one of the first people on earth to explore the power of synthesizers and translate technology into musical notes. From 1970 Franke and Froese will constitute a nucleus of the Tangerine Dream band, accompanied by more or less important temporary members. Unfortunately, after 18 years, their cooperation ended abruptly, with no particular benefit for what remained of Tangerine Dream.

Alpha Centauri, their second album, is a significant step forward in their career. The first change one notices immediately after turning the album on, is the quality of the sound. Unlike its predecessor, this album was not recorded in an old factory warehouse, but in a studio. Guitar is not a dominant sound anymore - it is messed into the musical texture that in turn consists of landscapes created by VCS3 synthesizer performed by Franke and "church-like" organs maneuvered by both Froese and Schroyder, the latter having a very temporary adventure with Tangerine Dream. Still, there is lots of experimental stuff in this recording. One does not have to look far - the whole "side B" of vinyl consists of a single, title track that does not possess a musical leading line. It is hard to digest only at the first trial or for "unaccustomed ears". Do not give up, however. Come back to Alpha Centauri every now and then and maybe, as I certainly hope, you will find a fly in a collision with Comas Sola somewhat attractive, even if pure historical reasons are not convincing for you at this time.

The second track is the most structured, which seems to be against their hitherto worshipped motto of complete freedom. Under heavy stratum of organs, we can dig the buried neoromantic tune - trying to catch it is by itself a pastime. Then they slowly progress with pompous symphonic schwung that culminates in hysteric looping of the tune and organs and blasted altogether with acoustic percussion solo by Christopher Franke. The whole album ends with German recitative. I love this language, although I understand as much as from Eskimo.

SUMMARY: buy if you like to experiment or if you are more and more into Tangerine Dream.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Tangerine Dream enters deep space, December 25, 2001

By 

BENJAMIN MILER (Veneta, Oregon) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Alpha Centauri (Audio CD)

With Electronic Meditation, Tangerine Dream blew people's minds by intense guitar and drum jamming, making them easily categorized as a rock band. Then Klaus Schulze and Conrad Schnitzler abruptly left, replaced by Steve Schroyder (later briefly of Ash Ra Tempel) and a teenaged Chris Franke. With Alpha Centauri, the band abandoned most of the rock found on their previous album in place of deep space explorations. And you know you'll get something spacy when songs bears titles like "Sunrise in the Third System" and "Fly and Collision of Coma Solas". Most of rock's convention's are abandoned here with the sound of what sounds like a pipe organ and lots of spacy electronic effects. The only drums you'll find is near the end of "Fly & Collision" and that's as close to rock as you'll get here. The album then ends with the side length title track which is truly the ultime excurion in to deep space. I just love this stuff and I wonder why so many people these days listen to Jewel. For me, I feel Tangerine Dream's early material from the Ohr label (1970-1973) represents the band at their most interesting, even though it's not for everyone, like Alpha Centauri. Certainly if you're expecting some of their later, more upbeat electronic albums, you probably won't like this, but if you love unconventional space music like me, you're sure to like this.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Stellar album from early Tangerine Dream line-up, June 27, 2000

By 

"alexsavulescu" (Ottawa, Canada) - See all my reviews

Beautiful find! Pieces of this album have been floating on various compilations since the late 80's, but the album itself is much older. Ranking up with "Phaedra" and "Zeit" in intensity and haunting athmosphere, this 1971 album was one of the first "space music" records ever produced. It is also a good example of early Tangerine Dream work, before Edgar Froese took complete control of the band.

Produced two years before Mike Oldfield's "Tubular Bells" and Pink Floyd's "Dark Side Of The Moon", "Alpha Centauri" is a very dense album, with many synthesizer tonalities bordering on the psychedelic. Kraftwerk was doing approximately the same thing on their first two albums. Tangerine Dream was experimenting electronic minimalism, and the three tracks of the record are the first sign they were on the right path. "Alpha Centauri" has a very precise idea of what dreams should sound like - "Sunrise in the Third System" sketches a hallucinating landscape, further detailed in "Fly and Collision of Comas Sola" (a rather corny name by today's standards), then destroyed and re-created in "Alpha Centauri". The tracks skillfuly increase their duration, but in the end the listener is left with a lingering feeling that the album deserved to be longer than 40 minutes.