Ricochet [LIVE]

Tangerine Dream

Product Details

• Audio CD (July 23, 1996)
• Original Release Date: 1975
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Live
• Label: Indent Series
• ASIN: B000005JKH
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Audio Cassette  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #586,801 in Music (See Bestsellers in Music)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of TanDream's ultimate albums ... and live too!, August 27, 2001

By	Michael Paulsen (Rancho Santa Margarita, CA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Ricochet (Audio CD)

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.

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Oh, for a real live tangerine dream album, May 25, 2003

By	Gerry O'neill (Morrisville, NC United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Ricochet (Audio CD)

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!

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Good, old 70s - will you ever come back, please?, January 28, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Ricochet (Audio CD)

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?