#235
Reviewed by George Chastain Jr.
May 1980
Tangerine Dream
Tangram
Genre: Hey, let’s put some electronic keyboard sounds together with no rhyme or reason and call it music.
Allen’s Rating: 4.5 out of 5
George’s Rating: 2 out of 5
George’s Highlights: Set 1 was more interesting and musical than Set 2 By George Chastain Jr.
First, when I saw that there were only two songs (let’s call them pieces) to the entire Tangram album, I went “Uh oh. This can’t be good.” The two pieces are called Tangram (Set 1) and Tangram (Set 2). Neither piece has vocals, and both are purely electronic, driven by what I can only assume are multiple keyboard players. I went into this assuming I was going to hate it. I was, however, pleasantly surprised. The first time I listened to Tangram, I played the album as background music as I worked on my novel. I thought the music would be distracting, but it wasn’t. In fact, during parts of Set 1, I would find myself accidently engaged in the music. Of course, a cynic might say that over the course of 19 minutes and 52 seconds, you would hope that you would be engaged at some stage or another. Each set consists of several sequences within the set. Sequences ranged from chirpy xylophone sounds to moody organs to synthesized guitars and bass to “Flashdance” keyboards to keboard percussions to….well, you get the picture. As I said, as background music, it was fine. At points, it reminded me of the whale music you might put on a white noise maker when trying to go to sleep at night. Since the music did not turn me off like I imagined, I listened to it again. This time I focused on the music. Set 1 is miles better than Set 2. There are very few sequences in Set 1 that were incoherent or a turn-off. Set 2 had too many off-putting sequences, especially those that tried to use captured sound. Set 1 appeared to at least attempt to make music that people might want to hear. Set 2 is more self-indulgent and felt like Tangerine Dream was trying to show me how cool they were. However, by this time, the album had my attention. I started to think of the individual sequences as independent songs. When I thought of the Sets in this way, I convinced myself that Set 1 constituted something like 7 good songs and maybe 3 bad ones. Not too shabby, right? However, this thinking was fleeting as I realized, “No, this is supposed to be thought of as one piece!” There it was. I finally came across what was bothering me with this whole album. Yes, the Sets weren’t entirely unpleasant, but as a song, as a single piece of recorded music, the Sets failed. Why you may ask? Because there is absolutely no rhyme or reason to the individual sequences within the Sets. There is no story the music seems to be telling. The sequences are seemingly put together with no flow or connection. Set 2 is especially egregious with its obvious attempts to jump up and down and shout, “Hey, how cool am I for using this cool new music technology and found sounds!” I actually began to wonder if they could repeat Tangram Set 1 or Tangram Set 2 if they were asked to record it a second time. I have a feeling it would be different, but I am a cynic. I knocked it down a point because there were no vocals which might seem unfair since much of classical music has no vocals, and I would certainly never downgrade Beethoven for not having vocals in his 5th Symphony, but if you are going to go all electronica with no words, you better inspire. In sum, this is how I feel about Tangram. If I was at a dinner party and someone put it on as background music, it wouldn’t bother me, but I do not think I would ever play it again on my own. If I needed background music or study music, I would play classical musical or Enya maybe. If I were trying to go to sleep, I’d play actual whale and ocean sounds. On a side note, before I listened to the album the third time, I did some reading on Tangerine Dream. Interesting band(?). They had a long run and were very popular in Germany apparently. I read they provided music for several movie soundtracks. On two of those movies, Sorcerer and Near Dark, I remember the soundtracks clearly and, yes, I see the Tangerine connection. When watching both those movies, I have always thought the music in them was quite effective. When I found Tangerine Dream provided the music, I slapped my head and went “of course.” The music in the movies help tell the story. It’s a shame they struggle to do the same independent of film. https://open.spotify.com/album/6aHeeKVHp0mIPrhKPAbnyf?si=MV3urVLtQIeWG-ABOCOOUQ
