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.

Across centuries & continents of musical traditions - Vangelis at 75

One could try something unusual for the 75th birthday of one of the most prolific synthesizer artists: instead of reviews of selections from his musical output spanning many decades, some factual information alone could depict the significance of the almost impossible phenomenon in electronic music that is Vangelis.

Regardless of one's taste or preference for certain sub-genres of contemporary electronica, there are a few unique facts related to his body of work, its impact and significance in synthesizer music.

Having shot to fame as the keyboardist and one of the musical brains of Aphrodite's Child, his musical output soon ventured far outside the confines of progressive rock, and far outside what nowadays one understands stereotypical "electronic music" to be.

Even in 2018, it is a curious fact that one is unable to name another synth artist whose musical output spans the following categories, styles, genres and sub-genres - whilst uses electronic instruments as creative tools to connect and blend these vastly varied genres...

There is early music, specifically Medieval and Renaissance secular and sacred music. There are Far-Eastern, African and Celtic, Greek and Arabic influences and deep ethnic flavours.

There are choral-symphonic oratorios with resonances of Penderecki or Orff, but at the same time Medieval characteristics that are returning to the days of early polyphony. There is jazz-rock and even good old-fashioned rock & roll.

There are space rock suites, ambiental tone poems and abstract sonic paintings. There are "new age" and mainstream electronic vocal-instrumental works.

There are minimalist works with the shamanic and hypnotic traits of Reich and Glass. There are eminently experimental electronic adventures with echoes of IRCAM sonic collages and tone paintings.

There are Greek ballads and folks songs from the Middle Ages transposed into spacey electronic works. There are futuristic soundtracks with era-defining impact from cult film classics.

There are piano poems of twenty-plus minutes comfortably sitting within symphonic and electronic structures. There are ancient Middle-Eastern arrangements coupled with electronics, that evoke worlds that are distant in time and space.

One can travel from the dark processions of the Inquisition to the peak of Mount Everest, from delicate Chinese ornaments to vast Gothic vaults, from African tribe's ceremonial polyrhythms to the hustle and bustle of a modern metropolis's nerve centre, from intimate folk ballads to the unleashing of colossal powers by ancient and future deities and demigods...

Above list is not exhaustive, but all this can be found in the discography of one man who looked at synthesizers as creative tools serving any musical imaginings... instead of specific instruments for a specific genre limited to specific sound worlds.

Looking back at many decades of musical output, perhaps the central characteristic that made all this seemingly impossible musical range a reality was and is the refusal to treat technology as a dominant factor in the creative process.

First and foremost, there is a, as some said, great Romantic in front of those keyboards - hence comes an eminently human passion that puts technology in the service of the imagined sound worlds that refuse to listen to artificially imposed boundaries of styles and genres.

It is an interesting quasi-paradox in the case of Vangelis: treating complex, and often trailblazing, technology as just any other conventional instrument, allowed him to produce the most unconventional results that move freely across the musical traditions of many centuries and many thousands of miles.

Vangelis in electronic music demonstrated what the late Ray Bradbury demonstrated in literature: using the characteristic tools of the most futuristic outer realms of a chosen art form, one can create eminently evocative, passionate and hence emotional works that are not hampered, but instead are augmented, by the possibilities of the chosen creative tools.

Someone asked a few weeks ago on a synth music forum, what genre does his music belong to. As all music journalists and reviewers struggled over the decades, so did the numerous forum members... except for one answer, which was: "the genre is called Vangelis"...