From vintage to new territories: Peter Baumann and Paul Haslinger's Neuland Project

It is fair to say that a collaboration album from two musicians like Peter Baumann and Paul Haslinger is no ordinary event in the timeline of electronic music history. In latter history, both names occupy a significant section with not just their time spent as members of the veritable institution that was and is Tangerine Dream, but also with their solo careers.

First of all, one must stress: this is not an album that rides some fashionable wave of mainstream electronica. Also, whilst it does have some not quite veiled references to musical elements one first heard in Tangerine Dream compositions, Neuland is not a recreation of some period from that band's history.

Something that may instantly captivate the listener, right from the first track, is the very evident pedigree of the two musicians. Whilst both had notable solo careers, the immediately recognisable Tangerine Dream DNA is very much present in the opening track's sequencer work.

The sequenced background and vintage-sounding lead propels us back to the mid-to-late 1970s TD sound. Thus, the opening track (Cascade 39) is in many ways pointing to a fondly remembered past rather than futuristic soundscapes.

Things change several times as the album progresses - already the second track, Road To Danakil, shows that darker atmospherics and thundering electronics are not at all alien to the two composers. In a way, one might recognise a certain gravitas in the arrangements and sonic choices, familiar to those who have heard the Machines Of Desire recent solo album by Peter Baumann.

One could always play the game of trying to guess which musician was responsible for which parts of the compositions one hears, and in this collaboration album, too it could be a rewarding game.

Clearly, there are solid sonic fingerprints from Baumann, the playful melodic motifs that punctuate the electronic soundscapes are unmistakably his - and make one think of his solo albums of yesteryear. Such motifs turn up in many places, from the aforementioned Road To Danakil to Dream 9 to Counting On Time (where not only the melodic pattern, but also the digital choir-like choice of synth patch is a direct pointer to e.g. Machines Of Desire).

The way in which Baumann & Haslinger can build effortless-sounding, fluid, and constantly evolving sonic ambiences is very apparent in the mentioned Counting On Time, and Long Now Icarus or Measure 3.

Something that starts as an almost ambient track can evolve into a playful, than animated track like 54_NOVO, with catchy melodic patterns, too.

The final track, Longing In Motion, is another example of something that evolves from the ambiences of vast cosmic spaces to a pulsating, then rather majestic, piece of electronic dreamscape. The forces that were unleashed in tracks like Dream 9 are held back here and gradually, subtly added to the discourse, with gentle pulsating patterns that make us feel firmly rooted in a Berlin School-style electronic Universe.

When it comes to the overall sound world of the album, a couple of aspects are worthy of highlighting.

First of all, it has a quite minimalist feel, in the sense that the sparseness of the arrangements might really stand out to some listeners.

This is not electronica with vast layers of sounds, everything is kept very distinctive and one really can very often count on one hand how many simultaneous elements are at play in the arrangements.

This creates an aesthetic where every detail stands out, as the very translucent and sparse arrangements do not want to, and cannot, mask or blur anything. The listener is not drowned in electronic showing-off of might, instead, one is allowed to contemplate often isolated sparse shimmers and specks of light in vast cosmic darkness.

One example is M-Tron Field, where often just one synth patch with just a few well-isolated distinct notes hover above a background pad (or not even that, just silence and vast reverberations). Every individual sound is allowed to take shape and float around, if it so wishes to, without being drowned in huge electronic orchestrations.

The other, more technical, aspect is the choices made for the depiction of rather astral spaces. Yes, there are some delays and phasing, however most often the task of suggesting vast sonic spaces goes to immense reverbs. Both percussive and melodic synth sounds can feel as they occupy a space only inhabited by some vast galaxies... and with such acoustic backdrop, the vintage leads (like the fiery solo in Measure 3) stand out even more and grab one's attention.

For an even more general and overall remark, there is an element of Neuland that is highly commendable even if someone's tastes or preconceptions might not actually match what one hears on this album.

Peter Baumann and Paul Haslinger, in a stellar collaboration like this and with the very special pedigree they have, could have chosen to produce a trendy, even perhaps safe, mainstream electronica album.

They haven't - and it is a positive.

It is an honest album, that is consistent with their individual styles and compositional preferences, as proven also by the recognisable musical and technological choices they made for this album.

In today's EM landscape it is refreshing to hear such individualist approach and risk taking instead of some drive to fit a successful-sounding pre-existing mould.

Retro futures, futuristic retrospectives: Equinoxe Infinity by Jean-Michel Jarre

Four decades after the seminal album Equinoxe, one of the most significant artists of the French School of electronic music has released a concept album that is tightly connected with that memorable epic from the late '70s.

It is concerned with the advent of artificial intelligence and the increasing digitisation of our lives. As Jean-Michel Jarre put it in a recent interview, after a somewhat disappointing contrast between what we idealistically expected from the new millennium and what we actually had in terms of technology, we are returning to that sense of wonder about the future.

Whilst the album intends to imagine what the world may look like in 40 years' time, both with its utopian and rather more dystopian elements, it embraces eminently retro technology, too - together with state-of-the-art production. Jarre has used some of his earliest analogue synths in his arsenal, hence sonic references to his first two albums are abundant - but we have also the latest digital technology eminently present in the journey that Equinoxe Infinity is.

As with the second and third installment of what has become the Oxygene trilogy, it was quite a task to make the album sound contemporary, make it stand on its own, yet directly reference the instantly recognisable sonic world that made the originals into major landmarks of the history of electronic music.

The opening track, The Watchers, has those direct references in the arrangements, yet the main musical motif is surprisingly Vangelis-esque in its gentle melancholy and the inflections - one is reminded of Oceanic.

Flying Totems injects considerable energy and synth-pop DNA into the mixture of different moods that the album gradually proves to be. The layers of sequenced motifs and electronic effects are self-consciously pointing us toward the Jarre sound of the late 1970s, with catchy and soaring melodic lead lines - an instant lift after the meditative opening of the album.

Robots Don't Cry is continuing the very direct references to the percussion, sequencer and melodic patterns of Oxygene and Equinoxe of yesteryear, including that characteristic glissando - whilst some bass arrangements are quite here-and-now...

All That You Leave Behind maintains that tight connection with the 1970s soundworld in Jarre's discography, whilst the melody and the overall mood of the track is of almost anthemic nature.

If The Wind Could Speak and Infinity show the age-old truth: simplicity is one of the hardest things to achieve. Both tracks are charming in the purity and simplicity of the melodic lines, the latter is quite  typical chart material - with the chorus and its arrangements making again very direct references to the opening track of the 1978 album's B side. So is the way in which blends into Machines Are Learning, the 7th movement, with the sequencer pattern reminding us, probably quite intentionally, of the former album.

Both aforementioned movements 5 and 6 tracks also introduce processed and pitch-shifted vocal sounds. In 2018, one could forgive listeners for thinking just how retro this all sounds... If one recalls the mind-blowing innovative world of Zoolook from the early 1980s (at a time where most used the revolutionary Fairlight sampler for just pedestrian playback of samples), this use of vocal samples in 2018 strikes one as quite conservative, even trivial.

The Opening continues with tight bass sequences reminiscent of the 1978 album, showing again a conscious choice of synth sounds to reference the B-side of that LP. It is another driving and high-octane, unashamedly happy and entertaining track.

Don't Look Back is more pensive, the filter sweeps on the white noise and the strings being again firmly rooted in the Jarre sound of the 1970s.

It almost seamlessly blends into the final track, Equinoxe Infinity, which is also a return to both the introspective mood of the opening track and its melody - making us think that perhaps the album will float away with this reprise... However, Jarre treats us to an epic build-up of patterns that start off deceptively simple - and lead to a majestic finale, which is all the more effective as it pulls back and calms to an almost ambiental, gentle soundscape in the last seconds of the album.

Overall, it is a structurally very cohesive and flowing concept album, albeit with quite a few gear shifts - it feels more consistent that the recent, and final, installment of the Oxygene trilogy.

There are no sharp changes and sudden corners in Equinoxe Infinity - it has, as the best of Jarre albums do, the ability to fill the room and transport the listener to a highly characteristic sonic Universe.

There are no excesses and there is no self-indulgent technological showing-off, the album is remarkably modest in a good sense...

One central contradictions remains: with all the musings about the future and how this album set out to meditate about how the world will look like in 40 years' time... can we find a single second on this entire album that is electronic music pointing to the future, instead of very self-consciously referencing the past?...

Whether it represents something still novel and unique in the soundscape of the second decade of the 21st century, whether it adds something memorable to the considerable Jean-Michel Jarre story of many decades of electronic music, well, that is a very personal verdict - one for each listener to make...

Cosmic dialogues: Tangerine Dream's 'The Sessions III'

When recently the first live composition sounded at a Tangerine Dream concert, the new line-up immersed the audience in a sonic world they, and TD fans in general, have not had the chance to hear since the pioneering 1970s.

These structured improvisations, first unleashed on the wider audiences on the CDs Particles and then Sessions I,  have shown that yes, in the second decade of the 21st century, Tangerine Dream is still synonymous with a type of electronic music that is eminently human.

These live compositions are not only spirited jams one would traditionally expect to hear only in rock and jazz concerts, but also show that for TD, technology never became an all-dominating factor nor an end in itself.

Sessions III continues the series of CDs started by Sessions I and II, both covered on this blog, too. The listeners, who may not have had the chance to witness the live material in Hamburg or Berlin, are being treated to two lengthy live pieces again, the album totaling 77 minutes.

There is something rather poetic about the by now well-established titles, which always contain the exact time when the live pieces were born. The musical content is rather timeless, hence the timestamps even more poignantly suggest the ephemeral and one-off way in which the pieces were created...

Hanseatic Harbour Lights was recorded in February 2018 in Hamburg. It runs for a highly pleasing 35 minutes, and it is has everything old and new fans of TD like - most notably, the disciplined, never self-indulgent introduction of characteristic sequencer patterns and the floating meditative section. The presence of the violin in the vast electronic vista is sublime as usual, adding a very organic and intimate-sounding element...

One just knows, simply knows, that things will happen when the first metallic sequenced notes appear - and the track develops into a full-blown cosmic journey. That sentence may sound so 1970s - but the music is not a retro nostalgia exercise, far from it...

This is 21st century Tangerine Dream with the breadth and the trust in listeners' attention span that was characteristic of electronic acts of some heroic early decades. Once again, this track demands attention and it is a rewarding demand on the listener - as it takes us from the ethereal first drone through sequenced textures to gentle, meditative piano improvisations floating on top of the electronic ocean.

The energy is carefully dosed, never too abruptly, no rigid shapes, no harsh angles, just waves and swirls exist here. Same goes for the second track, recorded at the Synästhesie III Festival in Berlin...

A masterclass in Berlin School-style electronic music in... Berlin, it doesn't get more superlative than that. Although edgier and more heated than the first piece, it has its oases of quiet ambience, with the inevitably and achingly beautiful violin and Mellotron flutes.

One experiences that Ricochet-era feeling: it is perhaps satisfying to keep track, up to a point, of what is going on - but one can be absolutely sure, it will not be possible to catalogue every inter-twined sonic sequence and layers upon layers of textures... and then comes the best moment, when listener has to give up and just let him/herself float away on the currents of this electronic ocean.

As this track also demonstrates, in the TD sessions each section is important and never rushed - we know the expositions and the middle sections can be mind-bending and expansive, but so are their sonic constructs in the closing parts.

The trio, namely Thorsten Quaeschning, Ulrich Schnauss, and Hoshiko Yamane, have again delivered a pair of live compositions that, for the entire length allowed by the physical medium, take us on a spellbinding musical journey.

Sessions III continues the series that show: the new Tangerine Dream line-up remains absolutely connected with one of the core principles that has always characterised the band: make, even if channeling something from other galaxies, eminently living and pulsating rock music that happens to employ electronic instruments...

From oxygen to outer space - Jean-Michel Jarre at 70

Photo: AFP

Jean-Michel Jarre, perhaps the most prominent post-avant-garde names of the French School of electronic music, turned 70 today.

Whilst he was already a prolific experimental and soundtrack composer before the 1976 release of his landmark album Oxygène, the latter has really projected his name onto the firmament of both popular and critically acclaimed electronic music.

Even in 2018, the album sounds futuristic, timeless and perfectly at home with state-of-the-art current space rock and ambient electronic albums - a fluid, bubbling and seamlessly flowing electronic symphony that still continues to hold many lessons for budding electronic musicians who choose to compose with intent a descriptive and emotionally involving sub-genre of electronica.

As they say, the rest is history...

Whilst Jarre has become perhaps even more known for the record-breaking gigantic concerts, where audiences were in their millions (absolute record was 3.5 million people) and the stage could often be an entire city even, his imaginative musical creations cannot be ignored.

His music was seen by some regimes as ideologically clean and "safe", the music of a technological future - hence it is not an accident, that he was the first Western musician officially invited to give live performances in post-Mao China.

While Jarre established himself as an unparalleled visionary when it came to live performances, with hugely innovative multimedia technology at work alongside his futuristic electronica, his use of innovative new musical instruments was also remarkable.

Cities in Concert - Live in Houston, TX

Fairlight, the pioneering sampler that completely changed music across countless genres, was mostly used even by luminaries like Herbie Hancock, Peter Gabriel, Art of Noise and Kate Bush as a digital instrument capable of playing back sound samples.

Then Jarre released the to this day astonishing album Zoolook, where he has taken the Fairlight to an unprecedented level, projecting us into a never before heard sonic Universe.

His use of sound processing and alteration via the new instrument sounds simply stunning even today - and all this was not done in a purely academic manner, making Zoolook actually enjoyable by the masses.

Whilst he ventured very happily into the realm of chirpy, dancey, highly trendy electronica, too, we cannot forget the fact that he also composed vast, almost cosmic requiem-sounding suites like Rendez-Vous, and ventured into "pure" electronic ambient music, too (the epic length title track on Waiting for Cousteau).

Even under the surface of sometimes very pop-sounding electronica, he often managed to hide complex musical ideas. A simple example would be Equinoxe, his second album, where the most popular track has employed time signatures that one is challenged to find in any chart-topping creation...

Even in 2018, even at 70, he is not only keeping up with the absolute latest greatest technological advances in sound synthesis, processing and music production, but he remains an influencer and a shaper of sound technology.

His latest studio double opus, the Electronica Vol. I and II., shows how he can collaborate with numerous electronic musicians who come from vastly different musical and technological backgrounds.

The tracks composed with the biggest names, ranging from Vince Clarke to Hans Zimmer to the late Edgar Froese (founder of the veritable Berlin School institution that is Tangerine Dream), show that Jarre's artistic range and sensitivity is able to integrate myriad musical ideas and sources into a coherent concept.

In ways that transcend particular subjective tastes and electronic music preferences, Jarre's trailblazing efforts in the field have left their mark on countless facets of music technology, including creative tools and approaches to the vast world of synthesizers.

His music is also testament to the fact that the most high-tech instruments are mere instruments, and the human using those instruments remains the key factor in the creative process... making the resulting music sometimes unashamedly romantic even, whilst created with (the still often misperceived as "cold") electronics.

What we are supposed to sound like....

The discourse on music's eminently different two roles, one functional, the other well above and beyond functional, dates back millennia.

The Harmonic Scale, Franchino Gaffurio, 1480 

Even when musical scales were defined and explained in ancient times with presumed, or sometimes vaguely empirical, ratios between orbits of celestial objects, music had at the same time a recognised functional role of entertainment, and a spiritual role with even cosmic connections...

Fast forward to contemporary electronic music... and we have something that, perhaps more than any other musical genre in history, abounds with cosmic references. Even vast sub-genres like space ambient or fusions like space rock are making direct references to that outer realm, which is immediately giving such music a higher purpose.

Apart from such philosophical and historic aspects, the democratisation of music making has been an unprecedented phenomenon in our history.

One is not thinking of the availability of an improvised woodwind instrument and the tunes that any shepherd could produce at any time during our many past millennia. Making music at this level and having a few mates around to perhaps listen to it was a possibility for anyone with any background in any historic era.

Trident Studios in the '70s

However, the democratisation of cutting-edge and professional music production has been brought along by affordable electronic instruments and studio equipment. Only very few decades ago a musician had to command a very respectable budget in order to produce something that could stand up in the market of mainstream or more elitist genres. The process of getting the end product onto that market has also changed radically in recent years, but this is an entirely different topic.

Apart from the technological and financial aspects, the actual process of music making has shifted toward a state of affairs that vastly stimulates both inspiration and the creation of well-polished end products - even eminently improvised ones. The end products no longer require in-depth knowledge of music theory, many rhythmic and harmonic aspects are taken care of, in real time, by the algorithms at work in the gizmos or computer apps populating the home studio.

But let's firmly and rapidly side-step any polemic on how technology helps talent-less people create music. This is a topic that, with all its fundamental factual, conceptual and historical errors, keeps turning up like rheumatic pain. It is similar to what happened to the replacement of dark rooms with digital dark rooms, similar arguments were and are endlessly made about how it brings the death of artistic photography. It did not.

AKAI MPC-X

What technology does immensely help with nowadays is the compositional process itself. Hugely sophisticated, whilst affordable, gadgets can radically change the creative workflow. Again, as the old saying goes, anybody can do it nowadays. Well, again, let's side-step this for a moment.

One of the more abstract effects of this technology (from superb MPCs to Ableton Push to full-blown music workstations with KARMA algorithmic composition) is the shift in our perception of how what music created in such ways should be like.

When Billboard magazine, of quite some pedigree, managed to judge Gary Numan's latest album as "not electronic enough", it unwillingly created a case study in this perceptual shift. Billboard fundamentally misjudged the concept album despite its content, because the stereotype of what electronic music should sound like has been drastically shifted - and encompasses only a few very specific sub-genres.

Ade Fenton & Gary Numan

Numan's album was around 95% created and finalised with electronic instruments, according to both the artist and the producer, Ade Fenton. It certainly sounded eminently electronic, superbly futuristic, and as it happens, loaded with actual meaning and messages.

However, it only sounded eminently electronic to those who did not drastically limit the scope and extent of electronic music to typical results created with drum and sample loops, something that aforementioned creative tools excel in.

Electronic music, from its early days and years of imaginative demolishing of all boundaries, has ironically become a semantic tag for just a few very narrow genres and sub-genres.

If one looks at what is included in the category of electronic music, then it becomes clear that in our perception this music has largely lost its non-functional roles.

Dance music, and all its sub-genres, is making us... well, dance and have a good time. Even the not so mainstream, but abundant, ambient and chillout electronica is here to helps us relax, well, chill out...

When talking to creators of mainstream electronica, it is also becoming obvious how even the concept of composing with a primary intent, hence setting an objective in terms of what the music expresses or describes, is becoming an alien one or something never heard of. In best case, it is seen as "old-fashioned".

Whilst both technology and its users are creating, among the inevitable ocean of mediocrities, gems of mainstream electronica, we really are increasingly pushing traditional composition and traditional musical values into, at best, marginalised and quite niche sub-genres.

Vangelis in his former London studio

Traditional composition here is not meant along the lines of doodling with a piano and taking out pencil and paper with staves. It is meant as approaching the task of creating a piece of music with actual intent, even when merely improvising on our gadgets... and keeping focus on what the music is meant to express.

This, though, requires command of music theory, and examples of supreme masters with no such formal knowledge are rare - let's just say, there are not many Vangelis-like phenomena in electronic music...

Just saying this makes one sound hopelessly elitist, because the ways in which we can create electronic music nowadays has distorted our entire vision on what the creative process is, and what it is supposed to come up with. Electronic music that is released on, heaven forbid, concept albums, is deemed old-fashioned. Undoubtedly, the excesses of progressive rock have made the term "concept album" an almost pejorative one in the eyes and ears of many punk and post-punk generations of music creators and consumers.

It is ironic though, that in the most limitless genre, huge proportion of electronic music is created nowadays with merely its functional role in mind. This pretty much drives our definitions and expectations of what electronica "must" be.

Some niche sub-genres are either unbearably academic (continuing the eminently experimental traditions), or labelled with the by now pejorative-sounding new age term. Latter has anyway become a bucket not just for pretentious and often ludicrous "spiritual" electronica, but also for just about any music that happens to be a fusion of orchestral, ethnic, traditional and electronic. In the same way that progressive rock has eventually become a bucket for everything that didn't fit into rigid rock sub-genres, new age has become the same for electronic music.

Nils Frahm

The perversity of our shifted preconceptions and perceptions of what electronic music is supposed to sound like are made even more evident when the unparalleled pioneers or novel acts of far-out electronic music are pigeonholed into the new age genre.

Tangerine Dream ending up in that category? Really? Harold Budd, Kitaro and even Vangelis? Olafur Arnalds and Nils Frahm? It is simply tragicomic.

However, like the unstoppable and quite uncoordinated  changes of ever-changing human languages, this movement shows the shifts and currents at work. It is absolutely commendable that our drum boxes and sequencers allow anybody to lay down musical ideas at any moment, in a vein that the great composers of yesteryear would have given an arm and a leg for.

Improvisations are no longer lost forever, and can be the origins of major and complex works. Technology really is here to help, as long as the human maintains creative control.

It just remains painfully ironic how the vast new abilities and powers of this astounding and still new musical Universe are achieving the opposite effect: instead of increasingly leveraging the possibilities created by the unprecedented technology behind this music, we are increasingly limited in our rapidly narrowing perceptions of what this truly limitless sonic Universe "should" sound like. And latter is confined to the functional role of music, despite its new abilities to take us beyond the party moods, ambiental wanderings and relaxation attempts.

One has to wonder what the early pioneers would think, if they could witness what this phenomenal new genre of music has become in our aesthetic definitions and expectations.

Sequenced Alternate Universes: Christopher Franke at 65

Chris Franke, a pivotal former member of the electronic music legend Tangerine Dream, is one of the rare and still active persons who can be inextricably linked with the characteristic sound of the Berlin School of electronic music. On 6 April, he celebrated his 65th birthday.

The originally jazz drummer Franke has become a superlative pioneer in the use of sequencers, which were used by many to produce repetitive sequences of melodic notes or percussion.

The live use of sequencers, notoriously unstable in the analogue era and in need of sometimes heroic on-the-fly re-tuning, was pioneered by him and the other legend of German electronic music, Klaus Schulze.

While Schulze has used it in his solo performances that even now, on archive or bootleg tapes are spellbinding and mind-bending, Franke used them in live jams in a band that demolished any pre-conception on electronic music having been something robotic and pre-determined.

Chris Franke's contribution to Tangerine Dream's and electronic music history's seminal album Phaedra cannot be overstated. Speaking of heroics, one can hear, forever immortalised in the studio recording, Franke's on-the-fly re-tuning of the sequencers as they drift out of tune.

But then there is Ricochet, Tangerine Dream's first live album. Listening to it in 2018, it is still mesmerizing in its use of humanly impossible to perform multi-layered sequences.

Franke has not only expanded electronic music light-years beyond what was humanly playable, but his seminal contribution was that a musician was literally jamming, as in a jazz group or a fiery progressive rock outfit, with the rest of the band, whilst using the dreaded analogue sequencers.

The resulting sound has become a defining one, and even many decades later, known as the  quintessential Tangerine Dream sound.

Even the characteristic "ratcheting" of the sequencer patterns are making their way into the most state-of-the-art synthesizers manufactured now - just think of Arturia's Matrixbrute, demonstrating Tangerine Dream-esque "ratcheting" in its product demo clips.

But this is not about technology.

Yes, he has performed his mind-bending sonic imaginings on often custom-made gear that was way ahead of its time, but the essence of what was happening in his performances was eminently that of a musical mind. Yes, when he did his sequencer magic, it was almost unimaginable to most fans of electronic music that the so far rigidly and repetitively used sequencers can be played as any other instrument.

Chris Franke, as very few others, have demonstrated that superlative use of technology with a through-and-through musician thinking can propel music to levels and spheres never before even imaginable. Any Berlin School electronic music fan will have involuntary pulse rate changes when one mentions seminal live albums like Poland, which even decades later is an essential lesson to wannabe or even self-proclaimed sequencer masters.

His split with Tangerine Dream in the late '80s, and his setting up of a California-based solo career was a musically and technologically interesting move.

One could never expect the superlative master of sequencers to release a, what one might call "new age", introspective and impressionistic album - but that is exactly what his first solo album, the simply beautiful Pacific Coast Highway, is.

Franke has also produced soundtracks with remote over-the-satellite-link recorded symphonic orchestra and state-of-the-art electronics, like Universal Soldier or the hugely successful Babylon 5 TV series.

Whilst he has ventured into architectural photography, too, showing the same connection between a musical and visually creative mind as Vangelis has done, one has to recall with nostalgy the simply superhuman tour de force he has performed during his decades with Tangerine Dream.

However, if one wishes to revisit the sequencing mastery of Chris Franke in a more up-to-date robe, then his London Concert is a good reference point.

One hopes it is in no way offensive to any hardened Tangerine Dream fan or any of the current members, after the hugely regretful passing of Edgar Froese... but Chris Franke, or as he will be forever known, CF, has had a lasting and forever defining impact on what we know as the "Tangerine Dream sound"... and with that, one is actually labeling a whole and hugely significant Universe within the multitudes of electronic music of past, present, and future.

A subtle but epic journey: Ourdom by Solar Fields

It is safe to say that by now one can firmly expect Solar Fields albums to have impeccable production, delicate care taken in sound design, subtle details in the mix and no self-indulgent technological showing off.

Ourdom, the very recent release by Magnus Birgersson aka Solar Fields is no exception - but apart from the polished technical elements, the musical aspects of the just-under 80-minutes-long album don't let expecting fans down either.

In today's collapsing attention span, shrinking to almost a singularity, it is quite uplifting to see an artist trusting us with well-structured, seamlessly flowing long pieces in the vein of the epics by Klaus Schulze.

Burning View, the album's opening track, is gently introducing the epic musical adventure with a floating ambience and subtle sonic ornaments. The gradual transition to solemn piano chords in Shifting Nature, then to the anthemic uplift of Into The Sun is a typical and very satisfying Solar Fields construct.

One can fully expect to be gradually taken to climaxes like Mountain King and Moving Lines, which are high-octane, but perfectly economically done EDM pieces with imaginative changes and variations.

Tracks like Wave Cascade provide a repose and a chance for introspection between the energetic currents of the aforementioned tracks, and Ourdom is very capable of shifting us between inner states as it does so with musical epochs, too...

Joshua's Shop with its ascending playful notes is taking us from electronic ambiences to a classical period, when the first glassy harp-like notes appear... As a delicate, nostalgic and exquisitely economic piece, it again shows how sound design, musical elements and thinking in structures can produce a concise and evocative sonic picture.

If one was not convinced by the range of imaginings heard so far, then A Green Walk and Parallel Universe can show us how eminently ambient atmospherics and spacey harmonies can fit in with the more soaring and driven passages of the album.

One can appreciate in some perfectly put-together long mixes the way in which different moods and tempos can be combined into a whole sonic journey, the mix becoming greater than the sum of its parts.

However, to state the obvious, here we have original material composed of 13 tracks, each seemingly conceived to be organic parts of the greater unit: just inspect closely the subtle way in which musical elements of a track can reference other sections they build up from or dissolve into...

It is a rare treat, and in a rushing world it is perhaps outrageous to strongly emphasise that Ourdom is best enjoyed, due to above reasons, as a single musical journey - and not track by track. Having said that, each track perfectly functions on its own, and, again, in typical Solar Fields fashion, each is a little electronic gem.

The album flows and connects very distant moods, from pure atmospherics to playful melodies to energetic motions, but the transitions are never with harsh edges...

On Ourdom, there are no right angles nor sharp edges, only ascending and descending waves and curves...

Tangerine Dream's The Sessions II : sonic visions on a cosmic scale

Recorded live at the E-Live Festival in the Netherlands, the fresh double CD by Tangerine Dream comes shortly after their 50th anniversary of continuous electronic music making.

As one of the pillars of the so-called Berlin School of electronic music, their musical output has always been a demonstration of how often the most cutting-edge technology can be just an instrument in, rather than an overpowering dictator of, an artistic vision.

While Kraftwerk is currently touring with their decades-ago created music that had built a unique aesthetic of a future world that is by now firmly in their (and our) past, Tangerine Dream has not stopped creating and imagining new sonic worlds. The latter visions are not those of some Mensch-Maschine, on the contrary - once again, Tangerine Dream creates an eminently human sonic Universe.

The two tracks, both of almost fifty minutes in length, are live improvisations.

As the band founded by the late Edgar Froese has been doing, this album, too honours the listener with a high degree of trust: in a world where attention spans are shrinking to a point singularity, Tangerine Dream trusts us to follow their journey through tens of minutes of continuous musical adventures.

And adventures they are indeed...

Both Tulip Rush and The Floating Dutchman unleash vast powers from analogue and digital engines at work on stage - but this is no self-indulgent showing off.

While largely improvised, the discipline with which the sonic paintings are structured, elements are introduced and layered, the way in which the technological beasts are unleashed and tamed in mind-blowing cycles is quite remarkable.

The sheer expanse of the musical pieces benefits from the possibilities of the medium itself - we could not imagine this in the era of vinyls, exactly as Klaus Schulze in the past could not truly expand his lengthy sonic visions to their full scale.

There is something about Mellotron (or nowadays Memotron) flutes, choirs and strings that is simply addictive, especially when Tangerine Dream layers them with, or sets them up as counterpoints to, pulsating and mind-bending sequenced patterns.

These two vast tracks are no exception, and if we wish to feel nostalgic about the tonal world of let's say Rubycon or Phaedra, then yes, even for just that one aspect, this double CD is a must-have.

But... the double album is so much more.

It does not do justice to the tracks to pick out elements or details, and one would highly recommend to actually treat the two pieces as a single sonic experience...

However, who can forget even after a first listening session the way in which in-between Earth-moving unleashing of sequencer improvisations (oh yes, Tangerine Dream have always shown us this is not a contradiction in terms), Hoshiko Yamane's violin gently steps in with soaring improvised lines that float above the electronics?

It is a testament to the eminently human, and not man-machine, electronic music produced by the band that one of the most organic and emotive instruments, the violin, finds a natural-sounding cosy home among the electronics. It does not sound like a sonic contrast, on the contrary, it blends in seamlessly with the synthesized textures.

Or, how those Mellotron flutes delicately soothe us before and after the tectonic movements caused so thrillingly by the intricate and complex multi-layered sequences that still to this day only Tangerine Dream can truly execute, in a live setting no less...

The listener is treated to lush chords, serene intros and interludes between these cosmic tidal waves of power, delicate melodic elements and self-confident power trips. Something is always changing, evolving, and nothing loses its way into some kind of self-indulgent technology showing-off.

This is TD, with an unmistakable and trademark sound - the post-Edgar Froese line-up of Thorsten Quaeschning, Ulrich Schnauss and Hoshiko Yamane take us on a very human and utterly passionately improvised journey that fully benefits from the possibilities of current digital media.

Recently, after the utterly superb Quantum Gate and Sessions I albums, the topic of whether the present TD is "still TD" has come up in an internet discussion. One may have the audacity, after having listened several times to the full Sessions II, to state that if there was a fresh and resoundingly affirmative answer to that question, then it is this live release.

Anybody familiar with the introspective, but at the same time expansive and perfectly structured, Tangerine Dream compositions is guaranteed to enter a familiar, but even after half of a century, a constantly evolving and surprising sonic world.

Three years on... the Dream continues

Edgar Froese (Photo: commons / wikimedia)

Edgar Froese, the founder of the electronic legend, well, almost institution that was and is Tangerine Dream, passed away three years ago, on 20 Jan 2015.

As a prominent and eminent figure of what became known as the Berlin School, he has navigated through almost five decades of tumultuous musical, technological and social changes with his band.

As a figure of speech, we can probably say countless studio and live albums, a long list of illustrious soundtracks have been created, plus of course numerous solo albums.

A quintessential characteristic of his philosophy and that of the music of Tangerine Dream has been the fact that technology never took over and never became the ultimate goal. It always served a purpose as a mere creative tool, as revolutionary as it was in Edgar's and his band mates' hands.

Edgar would be very happy to see the band today and his legacy - and he may well be extremely happy at, as he put it, another cosmic address he moved on to in January 2015.

The 50th anniversary album, Quantum Gate, which was also reviewed here has been a great success.

The number of not just electronic but rock and other music magazines that have almost re-discovered Tangerine Dream was a joy to see.

The return to improvised live performances and the release of these lengthy pieces are a superb renaissance for the fans, who last heard such concert pieces several decades ago.

The current members of TD, Thorsten Quaeschning, Ulrich Schnauss and Hoshiko Yamane, have taken Edgar's overall musical and creative philosophy successfully into Edgar's posthumous period.

There is something remarkable happening, and Edgar would be, we can be sure, all too happy to witness this: unlike bands like Yes, who without a defining figure joining them live have really lost their way and leading to rather mechanical live album releases, Tangerine Dream is continuing with vast bursts of new creativity.

While the sound stayed instantly recognisable, it is a TD of the 21st century and with state-of-the-art, but musically functional as ever, technology.

On a personal note, I first came into contact with Edgar and TD's music as a teenager, beyond the Iron Curtain. I like to always point out for people who could access any music at any moment in any circumstances, that getting my hands on such music was a lengthy but rewarding adventure... and what escapism it was!

However, I would never have thought that more than three decades later I shall be treated to fresh and invigoratingly scintillating Tangerine Dream albums that have the unmistakable presence of Edgar's musical spirit still.

While remembering with sadness Edgar, there is joy in witnessing a quite unique phenomenon in the contemporary music scene.

Rest in peace, tremendous wizard of sounds, of time and space - and very glad to still have You with us in the continuing story of the phenomenon called Tangerine Dream!

Tangerine Dream - The Sessions I.

It may seem like an overstatement after fifty years of existence and a vast discography, but Tangerine Dream's new release, The Sessions I., represents a truly key moment.

The electronic legends released their first live album, Ricochet, in 1975.

Around the time when other legendary pioneers were using sequencers for intentionally static patterns (Kraftwerk), for abstract fluid textures (Klaus Schulze) or pulsating melodic motifs to punctuate floating soundscapes (Jean-Michel Jarre), Tangerine Dream were creating something eminently different.

Ricochet and subsequent live albums by the band have shown a unique approach to electronic live music.

TD were producing high-octane sequencer-based improvised materials, with sequencers having been actually played on stage - such that the mind-bending multiple patterns were jamming hand in hand with electric guitar solos and keyboard improvisations.

The reason why The Sessions I. album is a notable moment is that the band, after a few decades of live renditions of studio album tracks, have returned to that dazzling art of extra-long improvised live compositions. After a session recorded and released on the album Particles, this is an hour-long journey.

The two, around half an hour long and largely improvised, tracks by Thorsten Quaeschning, Ulrich Schnauss and Hoshiko Yamane were recorded during the Edgar Froese memorial concert held in 2017 in Budapest and during a later live performance in Hong Kong.

If one makes here some references to albums of the past, it must be emphasized: this is not because the new album is a self-imitating nostalgia trip trying to just resurrect some old sounds for the long-standing fans... The references are being made merely because they may, to some extent, be suggestive of the tone and mood of the soundscapes on this album.

The opening track Blue Arctic Danube is something we have not heard for some decades, and again Ricochet or Encore spring to mind. This, in itself, is quite something, but even more remarkable is the fact that the material sounds fresh and brings a unique sound even in the electronic music scene of 2017.

Fans can immediately and instantly conclude, this is absolutely characteristic Tangerine Dream - from the first ambient textures to the trademark intertwined sequencer patterns to the arrival of achingly beautiful and softly played mellotron sounds (or of its digital resurrection rather, the Memotron).

The 30-minute musical journey is phenomenal, and without any previous knowledge of TD discography, one can be taken on a dazzling trip across many inner states - from mellow meditation to highly energetic pulsating sonic roller coaster rides to cinematic vistas constructed from sounds.

It is light-years above the way in which even now many use electronics and sequencers on stage - and with the live improvisation bringing in the various building blocks in a, one can safely say, typical Tangerine Dream manner, the listener cannot avoid being drawn into the musical dialogue that happens between the band's current three members.

Gladiatorial Dragon is of a different tonal register and it, too, is of a highly satisfying duration of just under 30 minutes - and fans of the Poland live album may perk up immediately, when they hear what is unleashed in this track.

While it starts with deceptively soft choir-like harmonies, a typical sneaky appearance of metallic sequencer patterns tells us something big is about to happen.

Well, indeed, TD never lets fans down when they decide to tease with such build-up. We know something is coming, and, by god of electronica, it does arrive.

The ultra-high-energy improvisation unleashed by the trio lifts the roof, this is electronic rock without electric guitars - but instead of guitar pedals being put through their paces, here we have nonstop changing filters driven into whistling self-oscillations, envelopes tightening and loosening the grip on the onslaught of sequencer notes, ring modulations and who knows what else unleashed by humans on their state-of-the-art electronic gear.

Yes, while it sounds highly technical, this is again a superlative lesson in how to make eminently electronic music in eminently human and passionate manner, without sliding into merely abstract sonic explorations or safely staying in the realm of some crowd-pleasing rhythmic content.

Nothing stands still in either of the two long tracks, one can hear the humans on stage improvising with vast powers at their fingertips and playing with and against each others' musical parts, as a jazz-rock band would.

If there was a live album in  the electronic music of the 21st century that can demonstrate to skeptics how the apparent contradiction between the nature of technology and the needs of highly organic live improvisations can be eliminated, then The Sessions I. is it.

Gary Numan's Savage - and a tale of music categorisation

Normally Gary Numan would need no introduction.

However, a recent clash between the rigid categories some operate with and the creativity that characterises the likes of Gary Numan perhaps warrants one - just to put in context a wider point to be made here...

It is a tale of how a label, which once described the most innovative and category-defying music, could be gradually so narrowed by some music industry machinery that it describes, at best, a single musical stereotype.

Normally we have had labels widen so much that they became all-inclusive. Thus they have lost all meaning due to the music industry's attempts of filling the new box with anything they could not fit into other rigid boxes.

Here, though, we have the remarkable opposite trend in its terminal stages.

As one of the most notable names in electronica, with a long list of names from Prince to Trent Reznor to Marilyn Manson quoting him as key influence, Gary Numan is to electronic music what Philip K. Dick is to the more philosophical section of science-fiction literature.

Although Numan is an artist who has had a key role in bringing electronic music into the mainstream pop culture, his dystopian visions, introspective lyrics coupled with his instantly recognisable sonic Universe elevated him way beyond electro-pop - ever since his Tubeway Army mega-hits up to his latest concept album.

Savage (Songs From A Broken World) is again a dystopian and mesmerisingly philosophical work, with musical elements that range from the familiar but characteristic Numan sonic palette to Middle-Eastern flavours.

A superb follow-up to Splinter, again with Ade Fenton in the producer's chair, we get thought-provoking meditations on our world and our existence, while the music takes us from electronic rock constructs to symphonic heights that linger in one's mind long after the record stopped playing.

However, being a distinctive voice nowadays can clash with the mechanical image certain music "specialists" have about the Universe.

Billboard, the well-known chart company, needs no introduction either.

Their definitions of album sales are nowadays desperate and gloriously inept attempts of moulding and bending eminently outdated music industry business models onto the new rapidly changing shapes of the digital world inhabited by its digital consumers.

As difficult as it may seem, Billboard recently managed to surpass themselves in their attempts to define this, to use a physics analogy, intricate quantum physics-governed world with rigid Newtonian models.

They have decided that Gary Numan's new album does not fit their dance/electronica category. As they expressed it, the album is basically "not electronic", instead it fits in the rock/alternative category.

The technical details happen to be such that around 95% of the album has been produced on and with electronic instruments, by one of the most recognisable electronic artists of the last four decades. As Gary Numan himself has rightly pointed out, it is the most electronic record since his album The Pleasure Principle (1979).

But the problem revealed by the Billboard absurdity is wider than any debate about one's list of one's studio gear.

The telling and worrying aspect is that key names in the music industry are grasping at labels that used to denote the most boundless, experimental or more mainstream, sonic world.

While they grasp at these labels, in an attempt to rigidly categorise the vastly varied palette used by electronic artists, they end up narrowing and narrowing the field of view.

Electronic, in their  rapidly shrinking understanding, basically can only mean dance - but even EDM, electronic dance music, is a ludicrously meaningless label nowadays as it has countless vastly different sub-genres and styles.

Unless an artist fits into this ultra-narrow box, even the likes of Billboard need to resort to a radical re-categorisation - Gary Numan and Depeche Mode are now "rock/alternative"... Listening to their recent two albums make this categorisation a superb absurd tragicomedy.

We have had categories like progressive rock widening, widening, until they lost all meaning as they just became a bucket for music industry luminaries to shove any out-of-the-box creation into.

The same happened to new age, starting out with a defined (albeit dubious) scope and intent, but ending up with artists like Tangerine Dream and Vangelis being categorised as such...

Remember alternative rock? The one where musicians ended up all looking and, rapidly, sounding the same and far from being alternative expressions of anything?

However, the recent Gary Numan episode is showing something very different.

Instead of desperately widening the meaning of a, hence increasingly rendered meaningless, category, they end up constricting a vast category to something that becomes an ultra-narrow one.

They can only fit inside it a tiny subset of just one stereotypical mainstream incarnation of what the musical genre really used to denote.

The wider and more imaginative that genre was once, the narrower its actual use as a label has become.

The darkest effect of this mental constriction, stemming from still not updated business models and patterns of thoughts that go with it, is that it started to feed back on itself.

The major names in the music industry, the likes of Billboard, have become eminently irrelevant in the greater scheme - but until their irrelevance is final, unfortunately they are still affecting musicians - and how they are judged by other elements of the rusting echo chambers that Billboard & Co operate in.

Artists producing imaginative electronica without dance loops and archetypal arrangements are placing themselves outside the one and only rigid, narrowed to a point of singularity, box tthat he mainstream music industry can think in.

One has to wonder what cataclysmic infliction changed the same music industry giants from celebrators and promoters of the most innovative and stylistically boundless music into dangerous automatons that can only imagine that music as something confined to their mental image of a dance floor...

After half-century of Tangerine Dreams

Tangerine Dream, depending on who one talks to, is one of the, or is the, most defining names in electronic music and in what has become known as the Berlin school of electronica.

Today, the 29th September, we can celebrate 50 years of their existence - even if, alas, the founder and superlative pioneer Edgar Froese is no longer among us.

Tangerine Dream's discography is simply huge - and so is their musical range.

Instead of being boxed into specific sub-genres of electronica, they have produced extremely varied output in terms of era-defining studio albums, soundtracks for some true cinematic landmarks (think of Friedkin's Sorcerer or Bigelow's Near Dark), and series of live albums that often featured entirely new material (e.g. the spellbinding double LP Poland or the much later Logos).

It has always been unfair in general, and certainly unfair specifically to Tangerine Dream, to expect, with ardent but nostalgic fervor, the artists to produce the same style of material that marked their creative peaks some decades ago.

Tangerine Dream, as many high-mileage pioneers, have changed directions many times, sometimes questionably, sometimes mesmerizingly... often radically... but it has been a phenomenal journey from early psychedelia to unparalleled use of sequencers and trailblazing new technology to space ambient to electronic rock to soaring cinematic soundscapes and soundtracks.

Their most recent album, Quantum Gate, is part of that continued journey- its release being timed exactly on the 50th anniversary of the band's existence.

The band, which proved that eminently high-tech instruments can be used to expand what human imagination can work with and materialize into soundscapes without technology having taken over, even in its most recent line-up continues successfully Edgar's legacy.

Edgar Froese's mind and soul is present in each of the tracks - and it is admittedly a refreshing and perhaps to some a quite well above expectations sensation that the new album is absolutely quintessential Tangerine Dream.

While it sounds like a spellbinding quantum physics-inspired musical journey of uttermost technological prowess, it is also vintage Tangerine Dream and it is eminently human instead of what many other practitioners of electronic music ended up producing...

If we feel nostalgic about the peerless fluidity and seamless mind-bending sequencing of Love on a Real Train, then Proton Bonfire on the new album will satisfy us...

If we would like to revisit the spiraling heights of Ricochet or Rubycon, then Roll the Seven Twice or Granular Blankets will equally satisfy us.

If we want some mellotron flashbacks of Phaedra or the high-octane electronic rock of Force Majeure or Pergamon Live, then we have Tear Down the Grey Skies.

The album is unmistakably and instantly recognizably Tangerine Dream, and despite the absence of its founder and central intellectual luminary, the music is a superb continuation of its long history.

Perhaps it makes some ardent fans jump or resort to long-distance spells :) when reading this, but... one of the most remarkable aspects of this album is that it sounds more quintessentially Tangerine Dream than some of the past albums when several of the key figures of the band's history were still in the band...

Even if one picks out this one quality alone, huge respect to Thorsten Quaeschning, Hoshiko Yamane and Ulrich Schnauss for continuing Edgar's creative thinking and producing something original, but at the same time characteristic of several decades of TD output.

Whether future artistic choices will take the new line-up into very different directions, or this characteristic sound continues, well, it is certain that we shall find out - as there seems to be no mellowing of creativity in the Tangerine Dream music laboratory.

The passing of a visionary

Ikutaro Kakehashi has passed away at the age of 87.

One wonders what other opening sentences can be written... Yes, he was the founder of the absolute legend that is Roland Corporation, the inventor and maker of an astonishing number of instruments that not only shaped, but also created, entire musical genres. 

If one says TR-808 or TR-909, then one means the birth of hip-hop and Detroit techno. If one says Juno or JP-8000, well, not sure where to even begin to enumerate the impact of these keyboards. If one says Jupiter-8, then one is basically lost for words. 

But then... he was also one of the two godfathers of MIDI, the standard for the way in which musical instruments and computers can digitally talk to each other. 

So much quasi-sensationalist and utterly tendentious (plus ill-informed) press has asked the question: is MIDI out of date, is MIDI limited...

MIDI was and still is an absolutely breathtaking future-proofed invention of a standard interface that outlasted countless others, and it is still going strong.

There was the invention of sound recording, which we take for granted now without realizing what it meant to be able to take music from the performer into the homes and hands of countless people who maybe never ever had the chance to see or hear that performer....

Then there was the birth of MIDI... 

How many of us can truly realize nowadays what it meant to be able, for the first time, to record an improvisation - not in sounds, but in actual  musical score terms of what was played, and then be able to change and layer on top of it, building up vast arrangements? 

How many nowadays truly realize what MIDI allowed suddenly, in unprecedented ways, in terms of capturing the details of a performance and then giving the musician the ability to edit all the musical information it captured, all the keyboard and controller events during playing?

Also, in terms of an interface, it is the genius of future-proofing. Since the decades of its inception, and the decades since it was turned into practical reality by the likes of Ikutaro Kakehashi, MIDI has managed to allow vastly different instrument of vastly different core technology to talk to each other seamlessly. 

The evolution of electronic instruments, studio gear and music software has been mind-boggling since MIDI was born, and it still allows all these immensely different gadgets to talk to each other in a standardized way.

A technical Grammy award given to him and Dave Smith is just the tip of the iceberg of significance and recognition... 

Entire musical genres would not have been possible without Kakehashi-san and his immeasurable contribution to musical instruments. 

Active to his very last years,he never stopped thinking about music, musical instruments, and musicians... "I Believe in Music" one of his book titles says... very, very few people can say that apparent cliche to be actually true and not only an expression, but also a living proof of one's life's body of work...

Rest in peace, Kakehashi-san...

Retro progress

Korg ARP Odyssey FS (2017)

The new year began with some retro legends like the ARP Odyssey full-size version hitting the market, as a result of Korg's continued dedication to analogue revival.

However, the somewhat philosophical aspects of this growing retro revival are something notable... and undoubtedly controversial.

The surge in the use of analogue modeling instruments, and then true analogue (new, old or remakes of old) instruments and sonorities has been with us for some time. Even dominant mainstream electronic music trends, also some of the biggest names in some of the very "here and now" electronic music sub-genres (think of Daft Punk), have returned very self-consciously to the analogue sound world.

However, two aspects are of concern - one is related to the instruments themselves with their marketing strategies, and the other related to the new-old and old-new sound aesthetics in the creative thinking.

To begin with the creative aspects, a highly controversial question could be posed very easily while looking at recent decades of synthesizer use. What percentage of musicians create individual, hence new, sounds with the instruments that are, above all, for the synthesis of unlimited palettes of new sounds? How many spend time to sound original, instead of using vast number of presets from vast number of libraries that the vast number of incredibly powerful new instruments offer?

The number is infinitesimal.

One cannot help thinking (not just feeling) that, based on contradictions between what technological progress brought and how much originality is heard whilst using that technology, there is a regressive trend of some proportions.

There are some notable and successful attempts in sounding (or, in case of some of the synth music legends, still sounding) original and exploring ever more stunning new sonic worlds. As in the case of even legendary old-timers like Gary Numan, it means many months of painstaking attention given to the creation of a personal artistic and sonic world that serves the concepts behind their works.

The opposite and considerably more superficial trend is what happens in fashion, too. It may seem like a trivialized parallel, but it could not be more accurate analogy: classic denim trousers of certain tailoring are revived with some twists by a certain brand - and posters say: 'be individual'. With a, one may add, mass-produced piece of clothing that millions wear after the first days or weeks of novelty are over.

Cue the legendary synths of yesteryear, always at some price tag and always with some marketing to make the old legends seem and sound even more individual and personalized.

The superficial and increasingly omnipresent approach to individuality is a musician resorting to the limited edition old-new, new-old, sounds and instrumentation. Oh look, a rare lead line from a Model D revamped version! Ah those filters from the Odyssey! That chorus from the Polysix!

What is happening, and this is factual reality in current electronic music, is the non-functional 'vintage for the sake of vintage' artistic (?) approach. Kudos to those, who integrate the vintage legends into their already individual sonic universe. Again, easiest example is Daft Punk, but going back through the years, even veterans like Jean-Michel Jarre can still use the old in novel ways to this day.

The problem is when the instrument, electronic as it may be, is not an instrument any more. When it is not 'just', with all its specifics and personality, a source of sounds to realize a sound world as imagined by the musician.

When it becomes a goal, instead of being an instrument, then we have the large parts of the analogue revival on our hands... where analog legendary sounds are used without any overall artistic concept, just for their 'refreshing vintage individuality'.

The most bitter irony is when some talk of the analogue warmth these legendary instruments bring and then they use them in the coldest, impersonal and superficial manner.

One does not spend weeks or months shaping his/her sound world, in order to be individual - one resorts to the most recent revived legend and saturates his/her compositions with the vintage sounds (or their emulations). Tada. A new revolution in sound... purely by returning to the past - exactly as one pulls the vintage tailored denim off a shelf.

The marketing of these instruments unfortunately plays very much into this phenomenon, exactly as it did with the mentioned classic pieces of clothing.

The instruments themselves, especially when it comes to the revived legends like the Odyssey and MiniMoog Model D, show a predictable and questionable duality that support the more impersonal and less creative impulses in amateur and established musicians alike - kudos to the increasingly few exceptions.

While they are undoubtedly unique in terms of their characteristic sound, they are highly specialized (and therefore often limited) in their capabilities - as legendary and revolutionary they may have been in their heyday. Their production costs are infinitesimal compared to the originals.

However, their price tag can be hugely out of sync with their physical realities. One, naturally, pays for the name, pays for the legend - and to make the contradictions in the performance-price-manufacturing costs triangle less strident, the manufacturers resort to the emotional side of even hardened electronic musicians.

It is made as very limited edition. It is made by hand. It is, to quote, "aged" before it gets to our studios. It is released in different colors and sizes. Above all, we buy a legend. It is, as one of Ray Bradbury's classic stories says, the haunting of the new.

While manufacturers, even hugely respectable ones with long tradition of sustained innovation, are after the money by releasing different sizes and color versions of the same revived electronic legend, something is deeply wrong. Their interior essence has become less important than their exterior superficial properties.

The electronic and other musicians who use these resurrected oldies for something new, and fuse the newest with sometimes the oldest (think of Theremin revival), are in a tiny minority.

We are chasing something warmer and more human, while we feel drowned in a vastly complex digital world - this is quite acceptable and even predictable, but most of this drowning is our own making as we let the instruments take over rather than be instruments in our creative processes. In many technology areas the same trends and counter-trends occurred and are occurring, as a reaction to some perceived dehumanization.

It is just vastly and deeply ironic, that in some (often mainstream) cases the false perception of some dehumanization results in a mechanical and rather reflex-action reaching for the ultimate in perceived 'warmth' and 'humanity'.

The bad news is, as too many electronic music creations of recent years show, that the result of this mechanical chase for vintage warmth is the very opposite of what the chase was about.

We ended up with countless albums of mass-produced, soul-less and cold electronica that wants to be so desperately individual, like the mentioned denim, that ends up being indistinguishably bland - while reduces, deplorably, the vintage sonic legends, too to mere gimmicks.

As it happened in other areas and in other eras, hopefully this chase for the superficial humanity and warmth again suffers some normalization. Such overcompensation, aided by misguided marketing, has happened countless times - and hopefully this time, too, the revived or genuine vintage legends can occupy a more functional and personalized corner in our studios, in physical and metaphorical sense.

(Post also available on the Niume platform now).

A third breath of Oxygene

The third installment of what has become by now the Oxygene trilogy was released on 2 December.

What made the first Oxygene enduring and extraordinary, even to ears coming across its fluid soundscapes 40 years later, was the fact that in many ways it placed itself outside the language of, albeit early, mainstream electronic music. It was eminently different with its other-wordly, yet accessible, soundscapes and fluid, bubbling, ever-changing structures.

Oxygene 2 was somewhat different, with synth-pop and dance music inflections. The third album cannot escape the compulsion of delving into utterly mainstream and utterly popular sub-genres of electronica.

Its opening is surprising, and surprisingly pleasing, with its scintillating sonic fragments and melodic elements that pop in and out of the sound stage.

The phased vintage string machine pads are present in various places in the album, vintage white noise sweeps and percussion elements, and even the instantly recognizable Elka Synthex (which made Rendez-Vous so magnificent sounding) makes an appearance a few times.

There is pleasing amount of experimentation, there are tracks that sound as if arpeggiators' patterns were chopped randomly to pieces and the melodic fragments bubble up unpredictably from the depth of closing and opening filters.

However, the predictable appearance of in-your-face electronic dance music tracks are quite jarring again. The lush soundscapes being suspended by trendy thumping of not only predictable, but terribly banal and already over-used, beat patterns is not exactly a positive effect. There is Jarre inventiveness at work, but the cliched drum patterns are just too... cliched to ignore.

As with Oxygene 2, the complete changes in mood and direction with much too ordinary dancey interludes manage to utterly ruin the otherwise cohesive flow of the album.

The changes in dynamics and effervescence is not a problem, even the first album had its gear shifts that were perfectly blended with the other tracks - but it would be great to hear any intriguing or innovative spins on mainstream electronica, instead the very tired deja-entendu patterns.

As someone remarked about the deplorable Theo & Thea album some years ago, it would be good to leave the forays into dance electronica to those who do it best - and with innovative ideas.

Otherwise, if we discount the jarring (and unfortunately jarringly banal) outings into EDM territory, Oxygene 3 is again quite a remarkable achievement with eminently state-of-the-art technology behind it.

It is quite endearing, that Jarre in 2016 can still stay fresh and full of ideas, and we tend to take for granted the not everyday feast of being able to keep up to speed with the exponential increase (and at extremely fast pace) of electronic sound producing software and hardware.

It sets an example to many electronic musicians who not only get stuck in their ways, but even start out with genre cliches and are are completely in the grips of the technology that they choose to use.

Imaginative, ever-changing, fluid and surprising in many places - Oxygen 3 delivers. If only we could somehow make abstraction of the intrusions of off-the-shelf EDM sonorities that pop up in a few places...