Tangerine Dream’s Virgin Years: Phaedra

Tangerine Dream’s Virgin years began in 1973 and lasted for one decade. During that period, the band released a series of albums that left many kosmische musik aficionados perplexed or disappointed.

Julian Cope, in Krautrocksampler, has the following to say about Tangerine Dream’s first release on Virgin Records:

“[Phaedra] was a good, even occasionally exhilarating piece of sequenced pulsing easy-listening trip-out music, and would soon become a staple diet of the early seventies British student. But the essential moment of their early Muse was clearly gone, as if evaporated in an instant.”  

Phaedra, however, was not as drastic a departure as suggested by Cope and others. Albums such as Electronic Meditation and Atem had prepared the way by introducing sound palettes that included, or permitted the inclusion of, ambient sounds and swirling avant-space sonorities.

For this first Virgin release, Edgar Froese, Peter Baumann and Chris Franke relied on a new battery of electronic devices which they used to refine their own soundscape. They layered all they had atop Franke’s analog Moog sequencer creating a forward-looking set of songs which many, including Jacob Pertou, Daniel Incognito and I, consider classic Tangerine Dream material.

One of Phaedra’s key attributes is its fantastically frigid gatefold cover artwork. The latter is described in great details by the Seth Man on the Head Heritage site.

Unfortunately, Virgin Records did not allocate the same amount of resources to the Stereo 8 version of Phaedra. The cartridge did, however, come with a protective box on which a full-color reproduction of the cover was pasted (the artwork for the cartridge itself was black and white). Included on the cartridge were album credits (an unusual thing for the format).

There is always an element of unpredictability when listening to 8-track tapes and this is where Phaedra’s real potential unfolds; a Tangerine Dream cartridge loosely placed within a slightly dysfunctional player will generate its own organic and multi-layered ethereal remixes.

Below is a variation on Movements of a Visionary which was recorded directly from an 8-track tape.

** Note that the length of the material makes song discontinuation inevitable.

MOVEMENTS OF A VISIONARY

Stereo 8 ( 8XV2010) – Track Listing:
Programme A: Phaedra Part 1
Programme B: Phaedra Part 2 / Mysterious Semblance at the Strand of Nightmares Part 1
Programme C: Mysterious Semblance at the Strand of Nightmares Part 2 / Movements of a Visionary Part 1
Programme D: Movements of a Visionary Part 2 / Sequent C

LP – Track Listing:
Side A: Phaedra
Side B: Mysterious Semblance at the Strand of Nightmares / Movements of a Visionary / Sequent C