Customer Reviews

Green Desert

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Recorded in 1973 but only released in the mid eighties 'Green Desert' is an example of Tangerine Dream at their best. A much darker and moodier album than usual

Miles better than any of the plinky plonly bontempi stuff they've been releasing for the past 10 years.

The title track is bleak, dark, expansive, and doesn't appear to have dated since '73. It builds up for about 20 minutes - acoustic drumming, weird percussion and ambient synths yet still manages to remain musical (unlike Journey through a burning brain). The guitar solo is the icing on the cake. Classic.

Along with Phaedra and a couple of other albums, this is Tangerine Dream's finest work.

This is a very intriguing release; the numbers were recorded in 1973 and not released until 1986 after being remixed by Edgar Froese.

The standout is the title track, as Froese again demonstrates his expressiveness on guitar with a solo that drives the soundscape for nearly five minutes. White Clouds, Astral Voyager and Indian Summer are interesting due to the synthesized noises that weave around the keyboard-driven melodies.

While difficult to definitively rate the work in the vast TD catalog, it is an accessible album for those wishing to hear the band for the first time.

I can safely say that I am a Tangerine Dream fanatic, especially all the stuff up to Force Majeur, and in particular, "Phaedra" and "Rubycon." So of course when I heard that this was a lost album, that fit between "Atem" and "Phaedra," I had to check it out.
As some have mentioned, it is rather frustrating to know that Froese doctored this up a little in 1984, at a time when TD was moving a bit away from their trance inducing electronic music. Therefore, we really will never know what this album sounded like originally. To add further disappointment, the cover art is probably the lamest that I've ever seen from TD. With some of their other albums, you had to ask yourself, "what on earth is that?" But with this, it just seems stupid, because with the other albums, with their mysterious art, the music and the art reflected one another quite nicely. But okay, that's not why I took a star off.
The music on here is pretty different from the first four albums, and it has little to do with the direction they were heading on "Phaedra." At times, it seems a little inconsistent, but you should expect the unexpected with TD! The first track starts off with pulsing keyboards, played very slowly, before building up to an interesting combination of drums and simple guitar riffs. This definately has a great feel to it, and it's very soothing.
"White Clouds" follows, and for some reason I just don't like this song too much. It's got more drumming, which seems a little too percussive and rhthym based for this period of their career. Not terrible by any means, but certainly not their greatest.
The third song is great, even if it really sounds like 80's TD. A simple synth riff played over and over with a few flourishes of old school synth. It actually reminds me a lot more of Klaus Schulze's "Timewind" or "Moondawn" albums. The only thing is that it is only 7 minutes long (this is TD we're talking about, so I want REEEEEAAAAALY long songs!).
The last track is a lot like the first--long and soothing. I can't recall too much from it, but it works very well.
So there you have it. TD surely produced a lot of better music than this, but this is a really strange gem amoung their early work. You can definately tell that since it doesn't fit too well between "Atem" and "Phaedra," they didn't release it at the time. TD lovers MUST have this album, but I don't think that it's a great way to test the waters of this fantastic electronic band. Instead, check out "Phaedra" or "Stratosfear" and go from there.

This album, it is claimed, was due to be Tangerine Dream's fifth release for the German record label, Ohr, in 1973. Before it could be handed over for release, though, the band signed a deal with Virgin, recorded the music for "Phaedra" at the Manor, Shipton-on-Cherwell, and the rest, as they say, is history. The original "Green Desert" tape, recorded in August 1973, was not prepared for commercial release until 1984 and to be perfectly honest, I don't really understand why Edgar Froese ever gave his approval to its release even then. By the time of this release, much of the material on it had already seen the light of day incorporated into more fully worked out and developed pieces, and this album sounds like little more than sketches for later works (mostly of the "Stratosfear" era). Credited to Franke and Froese alone (Peter Baumann being off on walk-about at the time) I suspect that sketches may be what much of this disc actually is and that the whole thing is something that was simply rushed to market by a record company eager to cash in on a hungry public's demand for early Tangerine Dream music. OK, just call me an old cynic, if you like...

Anyone who knows any of Tangerine Dream's mid- to late-70s albums will recognise much of the material on this disc, although it clearly dates from an earlier period. The technology in use is still rudimentary, and the playing style owes much to the style prevalent on "Alpha Centauri". You may also feel that one channel has dropped out on your amp, too, as there feels to be so much missing most of the time! And with a total playing time of just 38 minutes, it's hard to give any recommendations for the disc at all. Sorry, guys!

I certainly am no expert on Tangerine Dream; however, I have heard the two albums previous to this, Atem (1973) and Zeit (1972). Although this release may contain embellishments from the 1980's added on, the basic demo tape itself is probably still a major change from what the band had done before. What it has in common is passages of music with gradual change, but the instrumentation is somewhat different, using sequencers and other synthesizers for the first time. Though probably not as developed as the following albums (Phaedra, Rubycon) would be, it is still interesting in it's own right and recommended for fans of Tangerine Dream in general.

I agree with other reviewers about the weakness of the shorter tracks here, but I must point out that the title track accounts for more than half the album's total running time ... and that track is fantastic. For pure, somber atmospherics, it's at the top of my Tangerine Dream list of songs. "Green Desert," indeed; you sink into it like soft sand, then find that there is, after all, life in this landscape. The keyboard, percussion and guitar parts are all first rate, but what separates it from the rest of the album is that those individual parts add up to a fully realized musical composition. Sorry to say that's not true of the shorter pieces, which sound almost jarring after nearly 20 minutes of "Green Desert" itself. But it still rates four stars, easily.

This album was mixed from long forgotten tapes of Edgar Froese and Chris Frank's aborted 1973 album, without Peter Bauman who had split for a bit. But Peter returned and they scraped this stuff in favour of an album with him. In 1984 Froese remixed and added in a ton of new material that really throws this out of wack with the rest of the T.D. catalogue. To pass this off as a long lost 1973 album is a complete sham. HOWEVER it does hold some merit with its flowing passages and moments of 1973 do appear here and there but they are quickly mixed in with 1984 T.D. sound. It fights itself alot but is over all a good but not great album. Think of it as 1984 album and it makes sense.

I'm a hardcore fan, I'm the kind who loves Electronic Meditation, and I totally dislike the Tyger-Roccoon stuff. But sometimes it's nice to listen to a lighter, much lighter side of TD. That's the album for that. This is the album where Franke first experiments with the sequencer, and it shows; but the result is like a minimalist painting. I agree with other reviewers who say that if you are into exploring TD you should start with other albums, a smooth but serious intro is Stratosfear (very aesthetic).

Green Desert was supposedly recorded in 1973 in between the times Atem and Phaedra was released, but didn't see the light of day until 1986. But I don't believe that at all. Why is that? Knowing how Atem sounds like, knowing how Phaedra sounds like, knowing the equipment and synthesizers the band was using in 1973-1974, there is too many inconsistencies on Green Desert to make me believe this was from 1973. For one thing, I really object to the digital doctoring of the disc. In 1986, everyone was so excited over digital, so Edgar Froese & Co. decided to give it that digital touch. It's fine when the likes of Le Parc and Underwater Sunlight were recorded digitally since those were their latest releases at that time, and everyone was recording digitally in the mid 1980s, but not so fine when it's a supposedly (then) 13 year old recording. Too much of the album has that typical mid 1980s TD sound. I'm not too far off on saying that Green Desert has a whole lot more in common with Le Parc (1985) than any of their early Ohr or Virgin material. Why is that? Well, I hear lots of string synths, something I know for a fact the band didn't have until 1975, starting with Ricochet. I hear lots of drum machines that sound too 1980s to be from the 1970s. I hear lots of sounds that sounded like they came right off Le Parc. It'll be much easier to believe Green Desert was this long lost 1973 recording if they kept everything analog, with strictly Mellotron, VCS-3 synths, Farfisa organ and all those other keyboards I know they used on Atem and Phaedra. But I do admit the atmosphere to Green Desert tends to be creepier than anything they did on Le Parc or Underwater Sunlight, but I'm afraid to say that Green Desert left a money grubbing bad taste in my mouth. The one album that might best represent how Tangerine Dream might have sounded like in between Atem and Phaedra is Edgar Froese's first solo effort, Aqua (1974), which was actually released after Phaedra. If you want to really know how TD sounded like in 1973, pick up Atem.

Originally recorded in 1973 without Peter Baumann (Peter had taken a short break from the band), Green Desert was not released until 1986. The recording was obviously "touched up" and some fillers were added because this album definitely does NOT sound like the TD of the early '70s.

Many fans felt deceived by this album thinking that they were going to hear something more along the lines of Atem, Zeit or Phaedra. This simply was not the case. With the 1986-era updates, or quite possibly BECAUSE of them, Green Desert stands alone as an excellent example of Tangerine Dreams's creativity and musicianship.

The title track is an ominous and downright spooky affair that could have served as the soundtrack to a top-grade horror film. Gradually, the spookiness is dampened by synth washes and Edgar's technically and artistically perfect guitar. Eventually, Chris Franke adds drums and the pace builds and builds to a feverish pace and then climaxes with more synth washes, only these are a bit lighter and brighter than the track's earlier musings.

Astral Voyager is a testament to Chris Franke's prowess with a sequencer which is overlayed with light and airy synth voices that make the fast-paced track seem a bit more atmospheric.

All in all, Green Desert should be taken for what it is; a (brilliant) release from the electronic music pioneers otherwise known as Tangerine Dream. Discard the fact that it was originally recorded in '73, unless you simply cannot stand anything from the band after that period. If you get past that personal roadblock, it's clear what a masterful piece of work this album is.