DREAM ENCORES

Tangerine Dream | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: TDI (EFA)/KA
• ASIN: B00000G6A5
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #703,202 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. Order Of The Ginger Guild

2. Forth Worth Runway One

3. Eleanor Rigby

4. Oriental Haze

5. Story Of The Brave

6. Thief Yang And The Tangram Seal

7. Catwalk

8. Purple Haze

9. The Midnight Trail

10. Rolling Down Cahuenga

11. Towards The Evening Star

12. Dominion

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A dozen post-coital cigarettes (without the sex beforehand), May 24, 2000

By 

Steve Benner "Stonegnome" (Lancaster, UK) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: DREAM ENCORES (Audio CD)

I've never been a great fan of encores; or at least, not when they are taken out of context, as here. They're fine at the end of a concert, as a means of rounding off musical proceedings but I can't help feeling that a dozen of them strung end to end on a CD is more than just a little odd. After all, encores are, almost by definition, pieces after the affair: works designed to calm an audience down after the excitement of the main event itself and provide them with a sense of satisfaction and satiation, making them ready for home. And let's face it, few bands will be putting their all into their encores, will they?

The pieces in question here are drawn from Tangerine Dream concerts during the band's various North American and European tours during the period 1986 to 1997. Sadly, despite having 11 years worth of concert material to draw upon, this collection presents little that isn't already readily available elsewhere. Indeed, over half of the disc includes numbers virtually indistinguishable from their originals, all previously released on Tangerine Dream albums, mostly from their "Seattle Years". Some of these even have timings that are identical-down to the nearest second-to the originals, suggesting that digital sequencer technology is contributing more to these performances than anything the live musicians may be doing. Whilst this is no doubt acceptable to a concert audience at the end of an evening of live entertainment, I think it is a bit cheeky to try to market these on CD as something new.

In fact, only three of the tracks on this disc are of music unavailable elsewhere. And, to be perfectly honest, even the most ardent TD fan would be hard-pushed to argue that there would be anything lost to the world if these tracks remained unavailable! The longest, `Order of the ginger guild' (Vienna, 1997), is over 9 minutes of aimless, meandering bopping that sounds more like a warm-up piece than an encore. `Fort Worth runway one' (Budapest, 1997) starts out quite promising, with its introductory taped radio communications between a pilot and air traffic control, but it quickly loses its way once the synthesisers and sequencers enter-and goodness only knows where it is when it finally lands! And then we have `Eleanor Rigby' (London, 1996)-a nostalgic nod to Tangerine Dream's earliest days when almost their entire repertoire consisted of Beatles covers? Thank goodness they moved on!

Two other works supposedly unavailable elsewhere are, in fact, merely reworkings of older material-although, ironically, these offer more of interest than the three new works! `Thief Yang and the tangram seal' (London, 1996) is a famous TD encore piece consisting mostly of material from the "Tangram" album. (Gosh! Who'd have guessed?) `Dominion' (London, 1986), is a slightly altered rendition of the track of that name from the album "Logos - Tangerine Dream live at the Dominion" (so no surprises there, either). Tacked onto the end of this CD (almost as an encore to the encores!) this track - the oldest of the encores here - is a breathe of fresh air, really pointing up how automated TD's encores have become!

Despite its 74-minute duration, this release is really very disappointing indeed. Considering just how much `rare' Tangerine Dream encore material should be available for release (the band habitually tape and archive every single gig) it is difficult to see why 34 minutes of it should need to be identical to previously released and readily available tracks. Where, for instance, is `Rarebird'? Or `Loved by the Sun'? Or countless other encore pieces for which the concert-going fans have long clamoured? Could the phrase `commercial exploitation' occur somewhere in the explanation, perhaps? No, no, of course not, silly me! Nevertheless, I suggest you save your money here, and spend it instead on the multi-CD collection, "The Real Dream Encores". (But you didn't hear that from me! OK? And, no, I can't tell you where to get a copy...)

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars worth the time in the cd player, April 1, 2000

By 

tim (mi.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: DREAM ENCORES (Audio CD)

my first T.G. cd. it inspired me to buy five more by them(and still more on the way). need i say more?