Customer Reviews

Tournado: Live in Europe

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The selection of music on this CD is representative of Tangerine Dream's latest studio offerings. The sound quality sparkles as usual...something I expect nothing less of from Tangerine Dream. This live CD comes from their 1997 European tour. I attended the Frankfurt concert and wish Tangerine Dream had included the longer (30 minutes) aural soundscape version of "Towards The Evening Star." It was awesome to hear live. All in all, this CD is an excellent listen and provides newcomers to Tangerine Dream a good introduction to their very unique sound.

I have been a TD fan since '83. I even saw them live on their 86 tour of the U.S. Tournado is now my New favorite TD cd. I am stuck on song #6 (rising hall in silence), and my neighbors must be getting sick of it by now, but I am not. The third song on the cd (firetongues) is almost as good. For some reason, TD's live cd's are almost always better than their studio versions. This cd brings back some of the late 70's and early 80's TD, and confirms a long held belief of mine: that TD's music, supplanted with a dance (house) beat is just as good (I feel better) than most club music today, while still keeping the serene sound of TD. Try to imagine White Eagle with a faster back beat that doesn't wreck the song, but makes it even better. Not all the tracks are superb, but as with most TD cd's, the two or three that are really make the album. There are a total of three tracks that I skip continuously, but they do not suck, they are just not as melodic as some of the others.

Each song is progressively better than the previous. I bought this several months ago and have not stopped listening to it at every available opportunity.

This album presents the second half of Tangerine Dream's live concert set from their 1997 European tour. After the opening (untitled) percussion solo intro, the CD presents over an hour of seamlessly segued fast-paced and concentrated synthesiser and percussion tracks of the kind that the band has come to specialise in over the last ten years. Unlike Tangerine Dream's earlier touring habits, all of the material presented during the tour will be familiar to long-term fans. The music featured here consists entirely of tracks from their 90s albums, mostly from "Rockoon" and "Goblins Club" but with additional items from "220 Volt Live", "Tyranny of Beauty", "Turn of the Tides" and "Oasis" thrown in.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the stage line-up of Edgar and Jerome Froese, augmented by guitarist Zlatko Perica and percussionist Emil Hachfeld are clearly more at home with this material than with that of the vintage set contained on the companion album, "Valentine Wheels". This is an altogether more satisfying affair than that release, and indeed, a great improvement on the other two CDs featuring material from this same concert tour, "Dream Encores" and "Ambient Monkeys". (Four albums from one concert tour-is this milking it, or wot? ) Even so, this disc is more likely to appeal to someone who was at one of the 1997 tour concerts who fancies a memento of the occasion, rather than to regular collectors of Tangerine Dream's music of the last decade. Perica's distinctive style of virtuosic guitar-playing adds some new twists to familiar numbers, but there is simply not enough new material here to warrant purchasing if you already have "Rockoon" and "Goblins Club", or even "The Dream Mixes".

If you're new to 90s Dreaming, though, this could be a good place to start, giving a fair overview of the band's last ten years of music making. And if you then like what you hear here, you need to go out and buy "Dream Mixes vol 2: Timesquare", "The Dream Mixes" and "220 Volt live" for more of the same ilk.

This is an excellent CD. The Music was recorded live from the Warshaw Concert Hall, supposed to be one of the best in the world scenarios in terms of sonority. I have the live fan tape from the first part of the concert and the quality of the sound is whithin the best i've heard.

The CD shows the second part of this concert.

If you want to have the full concert of this excellent european gig you should consider Valentine Wheels, also; recorded in Shepherd's Bush, London the same year.

Recorded on April 23, 1997, in Zabreze, Poland, for a fan club release, the nine tracks encompass the second half of the European Tour's concert set.

With no mixing or overdubs, the listener is hearing TD as if part of the audience, which is a huge plus. The electronics of Edgar and Jerome Froese are augmented by guitarist Zlatko Perica and Emil Hachfeld on percussion/codotronics.

This is a solid set, with a soundscape that builds to a stunning climax. In a vast catalog of great hits and hideous misses, the live album is tremendous.

Once upon a time, behind seven mountains, behind seven rivers, and behind seven forests, there lived a band, Tangerine Dream. With their box full of wonders, they traveled along the mystical country of Hyperborea, and having arrived, they opened the large black box, and from the box, incredibly, mesmerizing tunes used to float high in the air, ricochet from the clouds, and come back to us on a cloudburst flight thru metamorphic rocks. That was long, long ago, at the time which even the eldest Hyperboreans do not remember - and since then the elves have been defeated by red city dwarves and goblins, and those ambient monkeys. There is no point in regretting the history, some say, but on the other hand, for mushroom trolls like yours truly, it's the only reason to continue with this life - the past.

Once upon a time, Tangerine Dream concerts were a unique phenomenon. Musicians appeared on stage with no plan, with no pre-recorded melodies to replay, like on "Tournado", but with creativity and spirit. One of them usually started playing first, then others joined, and the composed music onstage, in our very presence. Nowadays, it's not so. Like any ordinary rock band, Tangerine Dream appear before us, and shamelessly replay the same tunes we know from studio albums, with perfection, with no change whatsoever. What is the reason to go to such a concert? I had too many opportunities to see them live in my home country, but I refused to do so. I claim I didn't lose anything. If a band of this type replays the same numbers as they appear on studio albums , and if these tunes are shallow and unimaginative - what's the point, may I ask? There is none, that's what.

In 1997, Edgar Froese released four concert albums. One, "Ambient Monkeys", consists of prerecorded tapes with screaming monkeys and other animals to accompany the crowd waiting for the gig. This CD, "Tournado", is the selection of the most favored numbers from studio albums, replayed identically as on the albums themselves, rendering the album useless. Another CD, "Dream Encores", includes only encores, played bis after the gigs. The last one, "Valentine Wheels", is a refreshing set of golden-oldies. Something for everyone, one might say. I boughtt all four CDs, for a very high price (TDI, Froese's own label is not cheap), and I am mostly disappointed. No matter how hard I try, I cannot recommend you buying another album, where you will get exactly the same tracks as on numerous compilations, studio albums, albums with mixes, etc. Save your money for something else than "Tournado".