Rubycon — Tangerine Dream

Virgin

Tangerine Dream is a well established German group playing their distincitve ideas on electronic music. The three musicians are Edgar Froere, Chris Franke, and Peter Baumann, and they reside between producing albums in England, in Berlin, where they have a very complex music studio for working out new formats, and it was here that previous records 'Ziet' and 'Atem' were made.

'Rubycon' has been likened to the last record Thaedea". Invariably some sequences might sound very similar but the overall perception is quite different. This album was recorded at the English manor, Shipton on Cherwell, and the vocal group of Lisa Strike and others provide the very fairy, airy, background vocals. The instruments played are predominantly moog synthesisers, organs and mellotrons a far cry from the days of Alpha Centauri', when the group had an incredibly active percussion section and guitars. On that record, the drumming would rise in tempo until a crescendo, then a very sterile voice saying the world, the soul rises into the cosmos", and a quiet electronic piece finished it.

'Rubycon' has some enchanting tracks and some subtle nuances to accompany. It is music that makes you very conscious of empty spaces and big open voids and you tend to go very much inside heart and mind to appreciate it, whereas in rock, the reaction and experience is very much external phenomena, this being proven to some extent by the fact the body dances and moves to the earthy rhythms. It is for this reason that it would not make group appreciation possible and be decidedly antisocial.

The music is well structured and has adjoined that which was missing in 'Phaedra' where the moods would change without connection. It is exhilarating in places, especially in Rubycon Part I, and it is because of this that the repetitive pieces tend to disappoint after a lime. Apart from stating personal feelings about electronic music there is little else to say without getting down to irrelevant detail.

— Philip Hay