Album Excerpts Presented/Referenced:

Morton Subotnick
Part II [excerpt]
Silver Apples of the Moon
(Nonesuch Records)

Karlheinz Stockhausen
Hymnen [referenced]
(Deutsche Grammophon)

Gyorgy Ligeti
Lux Aeterna [excerpt]
Lux Aeterna Cappella Amsterdam
(Harmonia Mundi)

JS Bach
Concerto In A Minor [excerpt]
Mike Hankinson: The Unusual Classical Synthesizer
(Westminster)

W Carlos
Switched On Bach [referenced]
(Columbia Masterworks)

W Carlos
Sonic Seasonings [referenced]
(Columbia Records)

Dick Hyman
Topless Dancers of Corfu [excerpt]
Moog: The Electric Eclectics of Dick Hyman
(Command)

Tonto's Expanding Head Band
Cybernaut [excerpt]
Tonto's Expanding Head Band [reissue of Zero Time]
(Atlantic Records)

Mother Mallard's Portable Masterpiece Company
Train & Ceres Motion [excerpts]
Mother Mallard's Portable Masterpiece Company
(Earthquack Records)

Tangerine Dream
Birth of Liquid Plejades [excerpt]
Zeit
(Ohr)

Tangerine Dream
Circulation of Events [excerpt]
Atem
(Ohr)

Tangerine Dream
Mysterious Semblance at the Strand of Nightmares & Movements of a Visionary [excerpts]
Phaedra
(Virgin Records)

Redshift
Shine [excerpt]
Redshift
(Distant Sun)

The Nightcrawlers
Ombra & Digitalis [excerpts]
Spacewalk
(Atmosphere)

Brendan Pollard
Toxic Blue [excerpt]
Expansion
(Acoustic Wave)

Tangerine Dream
Part 1
Rubycon
(Virgin Records)

Review : Rubycon by Tangerine Dream: The "Me Decade" of music is now a world apart from our own. Back then a significant portion of the record buying public was supporting innovative music releases, and the Virgin Records label was feeding this demand with a range of titles that would eventually attain classic status among fans of Rock n' Roll as well as the aspiring genre of Spacemusic. Throughout the early 1970s Tangerine Dream and their contemporaries in Berlin began to establish an as yet unheard musical form. The previously known trends in music would not allow these groups to properly express themselves, and what with electronic and synthesizer technologies becoming more available a groundbreaking new music manifested itself - one which used an unfamiliar futuristic instrument and was fueled by a passionate disengagement with the past. After several early releases of surreal sound collage Tangerine Dream produced the groundbreaking Phaedra (1974). Art belongs to the subconscious, and this album attempted to sonically portray this enigmatic region of the mind. While Phaedra seemed like a sound structure that the listener was miraculously passing through, the following album Rubycon (1975) feels as though it is generating its own engulfing atmosphere each time it is played. Upon first hearing the tracks on Phaedra we find an experimental edge to them, but by the time TD went into the studio to make Rubycon (or even Edgar Forese's solo album Epsilon in Malaysian Pale) the randomness of their avant-garde edge had coalesced into a suite-like form and a somewhat linear compositional arc - fitted nicely into the 17 minute duration of one side of a 33 1/3 RPM long play record album. The three separate sections of Rubycon Part 1 and Part 2, although significantly different from one another, worked together to form a fascinating whole. Each realization begins with an eerie amorphous interlude of drones, metallic tones and wondrously modulated aural accents. The mounting tension resolves with the emergence of an ever repeating pattern of propelling bass tones, above which is played the lilting melody of a soft synthesizer lead. The minimalist sequence runs on, then gradually brightens as individual notes are transposed and repeated - minutely altering the pattern and quickening the music's pulse. Transitioning out of this energetic phase the magical beauty of the closing section solemnly brings the piece to its conclusion. The overall effect offered a strange and novel kind of cognitive disengagement - the unusual idea of traveling while sitting in place, which has yet to be fully explained or replicated by musicians who have followed. The generations after the Rubycon era may come close to achieving the evocative mood and otherwordly touch of this work, but never the innocence. New musical territory can only be discovered once - and Rubycon looms as the standard ever out of reach. - Chuck van Zyl/STAR'S END   3 January 2014

Thanks also to Kate Brett, Zach Mauphin, Emily Pavie and Paul Severin of WXPN

Special Thanks to Ian Boddy

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