Customer Reviews

Ricochet

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This album is the very short account of the succesful concert tour of 1974-1975, promoting previous two albums. TD musicians have confessed to listening to hundreds of hours of 'awful' experimental concert music of their own - just to select the best for publication. Why did they describe it this way is beyond my comprehension. Ricochet is one of the most imaginative experimental work of all times. There are many bootlegs out there, all documenting the performances, one by one. I do not have access to these recordings, but if they come even close to Ricochet, then they are worth every price.

Ricochet was the first official concert album, the first one of the very succesful series that followed in the course of the following ten years. You may admire their mastery and innovation while listening to their studio albums, one different from the other, each and every one of them a milestone in the electronic roots genre. Nevertheless, their concert works set me on my knees. No doubt about that one. In the 70s they did not have a clue what they were going to perform while on stage. They just entered the hall, sat behind the mighty synthesizers, Moogs and mellotrons, and one of them would usually start the sound to oscillate between the speakers, audience slowly coming to a hush. Then, one after one, they would take a journey into musical landscape, completely on the spur of the moment, improvising in the real time as they heard what their colleagues were currently playing. Mutually inspired, they would compose simultaneously, without any preparation. That the result are tunes and multithreaded suites? Well, it takes ingenuity. That's really all it takes. I admire beyond description their ability to improvise. I only wish I were old enough to be able to attend in all these gothic cathedrals they used to perform in while on tour in the middle of 70s.

Ricochet is a perfect, representative example of the multithreaded music of Tangerine Dream. A few, sometimes as many as 8 tunes and melodies compete with each other, embrace mutually, win, lose and fight in round after round in the musical sparring scene in your burning brain. I have loved to listen deeply into the Tangerine composition and detect when a given tune begins, then follow all of them until they vanish or are crushed by other sounds.

Ricochet contains only two tracks, one recorded live in 1974, the other in 1975. Guitar work is knitted nicely into moog ostinatos and mellotron orchestral tunes. The second track begins with piano, for the first time in Tangerine history. Lovely improvised melody gets eaten and ...... into the more and more developing sequencer musical line that ends abruptly after several minutes, giving way to the ricochet-like stereo sounds of the synthesizer.

Ricochet is the first Tangerine Dream album that is enchantingly rich in the sense of contained music and melodies, tunes, or rahter, to name it properly, themes. In years that followed, it was Tangerine trademark. Good, old times of the 70s - will you ever come back, please?

Love 'em or hate 'em, German electronic stalwarts Tangerine Dream have been churning out music now for over 30 years -- maddeningly prolific, spanning numerous labels and wildly different phases. If you buy only 2 or 3 Tangerine Dream albums, RICOCHET should be one of them. Released in 1975, shortly after their seminal Virgin label debut PHAEDRA, RICOCHET is one of the best electronic sequencer albums of all time and also an astounding live performance that sounds like a studio album. In other words, don't be put off by the live aspect of this album. RICOCHET encompasses the very best of experimental (and eminently listenable) electronic music in the 70's. "Ricochet Part 2" is one of the highlights in all of electronic music.

Years ago, far far away in a distant galaxy, well sort of, I attended one of the first Tangerine Dream concerts held in Newcastle upon Tyne in the UK. Sitting five rows from the front in the stalls, I was able to see things that many others could not...the musicians. On that tour they wanted the audience to focus on the music so they were cloaked in darkness on the stage with a screen to pick up from the music and have pictures projected on it. At the interval and at the end the musicians merely left the stage without a word and the concert was over.

To me this was a remarkable contrast to many others who were performing at the time and it struck me that they had a similar attitude towards their work as the Grateful Dead who were a different type of pioneering, improvisational "rock" band.

A few years later I listened intently to a live broadcast of Tangerine Dream live at Coventry Cathedral. If I remember correctly it was one of the BBC's earliest stereo broadcasts which I taped at the time and listened too many times over the years until the tape snapped.

Ricochet is an edited version of that concert and another in France. It is somewhat of a disappointment in that there is evidence of overdubs and considerable editing which is a shame because it really does not reflect the spontanaeity of the original concert. The fact that they were even able to perform live at all is somewhat of a miracle anyway but it really is a shame that there are no real recordings of the earlier concerts in official circulation.

Tangerine Dream were an awesome band in those early years when their sound was new, original and path-breaking. Today they are rightly considered to be one of the precursors of ambient and trip-hop. Ricochet is not the monument it should have been. Perhaps the BBC can accomodate fans sufficiently to release their recordings of the Coventry Cathedral event complete with a nice picture of the Cathedral itself so that fans might see the inspiratiuon behind the music.

I wish I could have fixed that tape!

This live album was released hot on the heels of their 1975 masterpiece Rubycon and has a similarly gothic and gloomy atmosphere. In contrast with other live albums however, this sounds just like it was recorded in the studio - the sound quality is excellent and the audience can not be heard at all (apart from the beginning and end of the piece). Ricochet was cobbled together from live performances recorded during the autumn of 1975 in both France and Britain. If the recording was taken from a number of separate performances, there is no evidence of that in terms of sound quality - furthermore, I feel that the the performances were seamlessly and expertly "stitched together".

The lineup on Ricochet is the classic incarnation of the band: Edgar Froese (electric guitar; bass guitar; mellophonium; mellotron; VCS3 Synthi); Chris Franke (double moog synthesizer; Synthi A; organ; piano; VCS3; drums); and Peter Baumann (Organ; Synthi A; Flute; electric piano; VCS3). The guys put in a great performance and Edgar throws in some slightly distorted electric guitar work to spice things up a bit.

The 38'14" Ricochet composition is split into two parts including Ricochet (Pt. 1 - 17'03") and Ricochet (Pt. 2 - 21'11"). The music is classic Tangerine Dream, with loads of brooding analog synthesizers, pulsating sequencers, and dreamy atmospheres. There are small drum and electric guitar parts here and there, but for the most part this is a synth-dominated album with very quiet textures. As can be imagined, there are elements of albums like Rubycon and Stratosphere (1976) on Ricochet. A very nice combination in fact.

All in all, this is a great album from the classic mid-1970's period of the bands' output and is highly recommended along with Phaedra (1974); Rubycon; and Stratosphere.

I didn't even know Ricochet was a live recording when I first bought it, and believe me it really doesn't make any difference. There's a smattering of applause at the beginning and end, otherwise you wouldn't even know it's live, and the album-length composition was new, so Ricochet slots right in with the band's other 70's studio recordings.

TD followed a far spacier path than most Krautrock bands, having more in common with Pink Floyd than Can or Neu! or the other German bands of the era. Ricochet featured the use of some real instruments like drums, guitar and piano that are uncommon on Tangerine Dream albums.

Part One, after setting up the requisite synth atmospherics, takes off on a simple but effective guitar riff and an almost conventional space-prog sound before turning to a more electronic midsection. This part shows just how much of a debt is owed to TD by today's techno and trance acts. The synths eventually find their way back to the main theme originally played on guitar, tying the whole thing together nicely before a long coda with mellotron, sound effects and weird percussion.

Part two opens with a quasi-classical piano part that serves as a perfect interlude amid all the electronics. The trademark sequencer starts up and a synthesized horn fanfare announces what sounds like a variation on the theme from part one, though this part was recorded at a later concert. The middle is spacy and avant-garde sounding, like Ummagumma with sequencers. Then the pace quickens, the synth lines are circling and diving all over the place while those sequencers ping-pong away in a musical translation of the album's title.

The whole thing winds down to a flute (or synthesized flute) section that serves as a breather before the finale. This last section builds in intensity before winding down to a mellotron enhanced fadeout.

The use of some real instruments and the near-symphonic arrangement make Ricochet a good choice for the "regular" prog fan who wants to pick up some Tangerine Dream. This group influenced everything from trance and techno to Ozric Tentacles to club music, all while making classic "headphones" albums for the space-prog set of the 70's. I find Ricochet to be one of their most accessible and enjoyable records.

Another essential TD disc, this live album captures 'the sound' of this group in their classic mid-70s lineup...perhaps the quintessential TD sound.

This is two long tracks, but don't let that turn you away. If you like the soundtrack to Sorcerer, you will love what they're doing here. While Sorcerer has more tracks, shorter and succinct, Ricochet incorporates many of the same sounds and sequencers (remember that the Sorcerer music was scored while Friedkin was still filming in the jungle, hence the gap from this 1976 performance and the film's 1978 release). Amazing that this was performed with only three players, sounds well coordinated with cutting-edge equipment.

As others have noted, this is not a complete show. I believe this is taken from two separate shows, and there is some doctoring and dubbing. Of course, this was (and is) fairly common practice with live albums in order to release something of high quality that the band thought was representative of the live show, but purists want the uncut, undoctored stuff. The Bootleg box sets that appeared several years ago, along with the excellent Bootmoon series, helped quench that thirst. Still, this sounds excellent, it's very clear and without that muddiness present even on the studio albums.

A classic representation of those TD sequencers, absolutely relentless, along with a few industrial sounds thrown in (the ominous clunking midway through Part 2). This particular release has been around for some time, though am curious if they plan to re-release these classic albums, perhaps with bonus material. Highly recommended for electronic music fans.

I'd like to say that this album is quite as excellent as the others from this time, like Stratosfear and Phaedra, but it's a bit different (and interesting) for the fact that there is live drumming almost all the way through. However this is not like the drumming on the disappointing Cyclone album, which really doesn't even sound much like a TD album. The drumming is good, and there is prodigious use of toms with mallets (as on Atem) as opposed to two-four hihat-snare stuff. Anyway, the production is quite nice with interesting stereo effects, and there is an intimate feeling to the performance, as if it was a sunny warm afternoon and everyone was in the mood for exactly what was played and that's what the recording captured. By contrast the music manages to evoke typical TD soundscapes and carry you away, and this combined with the intimacy of the performance creates an interesting effect. There is definetly a lot of improvisation happening, but that's typical of their music from this period. To hear it live and even a bit raw is a treat - there doesn't seem to be any post-production effects added, not even reverb on the drums. If you like the Phaedra, Rubycon, Stratosfear period, this one should also be in your collection. A great snapshot of the band live from their classic period, with some cool percussion added to the sequenced space-echoed basslines. A final comment is that rather than fighting or adding clutter, the drums keep within the integrity of the grooves TD likes to create with the sequencers. And Edgar Froese gets a very nice dreamy sound out of his guitar (his amp was miked, not recorded direct like in a lot of their later stuff).

This is a transitional album for Tangerine Dream, embodying the dark ambient style of thier early period with the repetitive arpeggiated synths of thier latter day period. The addition of acoustic instruments is interesting and works well, but this album is often too repetious. However, in essense, this album is Tangerine Dream's last good album. After this, Tangerine Dream began thier descent into the soulless boring joke that it is today. It never ceases to amaze me how a band that released albums of such beauty and power as Ziet and Rubycon can suddenly, in the last two decades, make music that wouldn't sound out of place in a exercise video or infomercial. Ricochet is one of the few albums in which Tangerine Dream used thier repetitive synth patterns successfully. Certianly not a must have for first-time TD listeners, but a must for those who enjoy Tangerine Dreams early period.

By 1975, when this album was recorded, Tangerine Dream had equipped themselves with an impressive array of (largely) custom kit, making them capable of producing sounds that no-one else at the time could come even close to emulating. Almost 25 years down the road, the music obviously isn't such a novelty any more, but it remains every bit as vibrant-and unique-as it ever was. And this album shows just how comfortable-and brilliant-these three guys were when working together in front of an audience. The music-making here appears to be so effortless and is truly captivating, even now. Bw warned, though, that this disc is only 38 minutes long!

(For a full review of this disc, see its entry on the amazon.co.uk site.)

This 1975 recording captures Tangerine Dream at what I think is the pinnacle year of their peak period (1974-1976), and features the classic lineup: Edgar Froese, Chris Franke, Peter Baumann. They were on top of their game at this point. Part 1 was recorded in France during the autumn of 1975 (most likely in September) and has more of a rhythm/groove to it than Part 2, thanks in large part to Froese's guitar playing. Part 2 was recorded on 75-Oct-23 at Fairfield Hall in Croydon, England. It starts off with some gentle piano playing before delving into Tangerine's more traditional synth playing, then ends gently again. The sound quality is very good and the audience is not heard other than at the beginning/end. This was not some studio wizardry, as almost all Tangerine concert recordings I've heard during this period have incredibly well behaved audiences that usually only make noise before and after a musical segment. Apparently, the band made some changes to the raw live tape in the studio. Comparing the untouched recording to Ricochet Pt 2 confirms this. Nevertheless, Ricochet is a great cd and my favorite of their original LP live releases. Both Ricochet and Boxed Set Vol 1 (which is a more complete and untouched recording from the 75-Oct-23 show) are highly recommended if you are a fan of this fruitful period of Tangerine Dream.