Thorsten Quaeschning has also been with us since 2005 Tangerine Dream, in his announcement before the almost three-hour concert in the Isarphilharmonie, remembered the band’s last Munich appearance in 2014 at the Circus Krone. Edgar Froese was still there, the band’s only constant for decades. Froese founded Tangerine Dream in 1967 under Kraut and jazz rock influences, but they soon became one of the pioneers of electronic pop music as part of the “Berlin School”. Froese had already handed over the management of the band to Quaeschning in 2013, who was supposed to continue it according to his wishes and in his spirit. In January 2015, Froese died unexpectedly of a pulmonary embolism.
Since then, Quaeschning has done as he was told, not least by bringing together the different phases of the band’s long history, which has now been processed in numerous documentaries and glorified in a cult-like manner by fans. In a pretty compelling way, as you could experience in the Isarphilharmonie. The classic trio line-up with Hoshiko Yamane and the new addition from 2020, Paul Frick, played “old, new and very old”. A visually stunning tour de force with the typical mix of spherical sound surfaces, drum machine beats and synthesizer sounds.
Overwhelming music that no longer sounded as old-avant-garde and outdated as it did ten years ago, but rather contemporary again. Because you could hear how many traces Tangerine Dream left in pop and beyond. And because Quaeschning remembers the two-hour hit parade from “Phaedra” to “Betrayal” (from the legendary soundtrack of “Sorcerer”, the first of countless Tangerine Dream film scores) and the poppy “Rare Bird” to “Ricochet” a more chamber music “session ” followed by (well-prepared) improvisations, which also went back to the band’s experimental roots. All of which resulted in a fascinating journey through time from the beginnings to a possible future of electro.