#180
May 1985
Tangerine Dream
Le Parc
Genre: Electronic
3 out of 5
Highlights:
Boie dul Bologne (Paris)
The Cliffs of Sydney (Sydney)
It’s been a while since I listened to Tangerine Dream for this project. Force Majeure and Tangram were excellent in an era where they and Kraftwerk and OMD were defining this space. I don’t pay attention to soundtracks here so they’ve not been around for a while for me.
In the interim we’ve had a few really excellent Jean Michelle Jarre records but electronica hasn’t factored in as much as synth pop.
This is an album wherein each song is sort of a soundtrack of it’s own, inspired by an actual park somewhere in the world.
I’m not entirely sure if they are accurate portrayals, since I’ve never been to many of them. There is something truly ominous about “Central Park” and in 1985 I bet that’s what they were going for. It’s more like the soundtrack to a cop film than an ode to Olmstead’s genius of botanical engineering.
Often, though, it feels like TD is playing catchup to Jarre (He should sue them for biting so hard on him in “Gaudi Park”) and that means it doesn’t feel fresh. It shouldn’t today. But it feels like it would’ve felt pause when it came out.
I’ll say this, though, “Le Parc (L.A. Streethawk) is exactly as Los Angeles should sound in the 80s. Pulsing, lights dancing off puddles from imagined rainstorms (why was there SO much water in LA Movies and TV shows???It NEVER fucking rains here!), but, again, Jarre did this already and he did it better. Hell, Hammer did it better. Moroder did it better.
Tangerine Dream sounds like latecomers to a genre they pretty much pioneered.
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