Disquiet

William Gibson once noted that the future is already here, but just isn’t evenly distributed yet. William Faulkner noted, further back, that the past isn’t dead; it isn’t even past. On the web, what’s past isn’t necessarily readily accessible, but when it is, broad distribution happens quickly. The Internet is filling up with documentation of times gone by, case in point a pair of deeply trippy Tangerine Dream concert recordings from 1976. Reportedly recorded on February 9 of that year, the two MP3s showcase the group when it was a keyboard trio of Edgar Froese, Christopher Franke, and Peter Baumann. If you tend to avoid Tangerine Dream, do understand that there is here none of the turbo-charged momentum or florid exhibitionism that led to the pervasive negative associations with the group’s name, virtually making it a synonym for everything wrong with synthesized pop music. No, this is heady stuff, rarely grounded in any sort of melody — it’s all free-flowing, an analog-synth stream of consciousness. [Update June 20, 2009: There had been a link here to the Zip files, which were hosted elsewhere, but I received what appeared to be an email from Edgar Froese of Tangerine Dream (an attempt to reply got an error message) that appeared to be asking me to delete the link, so I've done so.] By coincidence, the concert was recorded in Brussels, as was the live Amon Tobin show posted last week here (disquiet.com). (Found via justanothergarden.blogspot.com, via synthtopia.com.)

By Marc Weidenbaum