Tangerine Dream

The was a point where Tangerine Dream moved into ambient music and for many of their original audience they became inconsequential and ‘Wallpaper music’ but, as this one proves, that couldn’t be further from the truth.

‘Song of The Whale pt 1 From Dawn ...’ and ‘Song of The Whale pt 2 .... To Dusk’ manage to create a narrative entirely through the music and the huge guitar passages are truly shocking after you have been lured into the passivity of the track. There are Floydian moments and a sense of searching – wallpaper it isn’t!
‘Dolphin Dance’ is just as it sounds, skittish, discoid but incorporating classic Froeser and Francke synth forms. The percussive nature was becoming one of the features of the band by now and they use it to great effect on ‘Ride on The Ray’.
There is a dark edge to ‘Scuba Scuba’, a tone of unfound wonders or horrors but the title track is the one – for me it is one of the best pieces of ambient imagery they have produced in all their lontg years – only running a shade under six minutes but the sense of floating in the rays of the fading sun is profound.

The album seemed to mark a point in the bands evolution where a number of strands coalesced and afterward moved away again and it stands as one of the best moments of a great band.