Customer Reviews

Dream Mixes, Vol. 1

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Described as `a just-for-fun project' by Edgar Froese, the 1995 2-CD set "The Dream Mixes" presents something of a new face to Tangerine Dream. This release contains a bonus CD ("The Club Dream Mixes") not included with the standard US release.

All of the tracks included here are, as the title suggests, re-mixes of tracks from their three immediately preceding albums, "Rockoon", "The Tyranny of Beauty" and "The Turn of the Tides", with a decided emphasis on one thing: the club pulse. Some tracks retain sufficient of their original material to be recognisable, and so have retained their original titles. Others have been so heavily reworked that altogether new titles have been given to them. Either way, though, even if you already have all three of the source albums you need have no fear that these discs duplicate any of the music you already have.

As already mentioned, the emphasis throughout this album is on a dance pulse and just about all other aspects of the original tracks have been sacrificed to this end. That said, I have to say that most the results aren't as uniformly uninteresting as might be expected. Generally speaking, the percussion layers are so forward and so concentrated that they take on something of a life of their own. And even within the constraints of a constantly maintained beat, some of the tracks manage enough development of their ideas to sustain interest for those who demand more to their music than something to develop a sweat to!

If you're into the club music scene, then you'll find here over 150 minutes of some of the most interesting examples of that ilk you're likely to find. If you're into Step Aerobics, you should be pretty fit by the time you get to the end of this lot, too! And even for the rest of us, these two discs are worth a listen. (I think the longer CD1: "The Dream Mixes" has more variety than CD2: "The Club Dream Mixes"; it has more `new' stuff too.) I don't think that any of the remixes are improvements over their originals but some of them are certainly fun. And some of those with new names are definitely worth having - `Virtually Fields' in particular (a `Firetongues' derivative, as far as I can tell) is an absolute gem - and, of course, Tangerine Dream fans can have endless fun trying to identify the original source tracks!

So, yes, all told, this release is a reasonable amount of fun. And if you like what you hear, then keep an eye open for the second volume of Dream mixes, "Timesquare", which delivers more of this kind of thing, but of higher quality.

In early 1995, Froese senior was still busy mangling Tangerine Dream's albums of the past, preparing them for the "Tangents" compilation, not to mention his involvement in a similar enterprise - mangling his own solo compositions of the past for the double album "Beyond the Storm", which appeared for sale later in the year. Without much parental guidance, Froese junior sat down and with the father's permission used the musical input of Froese family to pursue his own visions. The result was the first entree in the multi-year dinner of "Dream Mixes", a project continued to this day. Originally available in clubs, and then only as a single CD, this album was finally reissued by Froese's own label, TDI, a few years later - as a double CD. Jolly well! I wish they had the decency to issue their soundtrack collection, "The Hollywood Years", on one double CD instead of adopting a heartless commercial attitude of releasing two separate CDs at the same time. Greed is a cardinal sin, last I heard.

The contents of this CD, as suggested in my reviews of immediately preceding work, is the set of mangled tunes, and then remangled again and again. Oh well, after all it's an album of Froese junior mixes, that much is clear. Very foine idear, methinks - but I wish they had perished the thought of playing with the same small set of tunes again and again! If you want to mix, mix! But at least choose a wider set of input tracks to mix, for otherwise it defeats its purpose. The albums mangled on "Dream Mixes" are "Rockoon", "Turn of the Tides" and "Tyranny of Beauty".

More often than not, the mixes are as unimaginative as the originals, but I must give Jerome one thing - he does seem to have a feeling for techno. Tracks like 'Virtually Fields', 'San Rocco', or the incredibly rocking 'Sojus' represent a solid, good work which should catch your interest even if you are as despirited with the direction as I am. The irony is that musically, 'Sojus' alone puts their studio albums from 1992 to 1994 to shame.