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Tangerine Dream: Green Desert

 A l b u m   D e t a i l s


Label: Jive Records
Released: 1986.01.15
Time:
 38:25
Category: Electronic, Avant-Garde
Producer(s): Edgar Froese, Christopher Franke
Rating:
Media type: CD
Web address: www.tangerinedream-music.com
Appears with:
Purchase date: 2012
Price in €: 1,00





 S o n g s ,   T r a c k s


[1] Green Desert (E.Froese/Ch.Franke) - 19:25
[2] White Clouds (E.Froese/Ch.Franke) - 5:01
[3] Astral Voyager (E.Froese/Ch.Franke) - 7:03
[4] Indian Summer (E.Froese/Ch.Franke) - 6:53

 A r t i s t s ,   P e r s o n n e l


Edgar Froese - Synthesizers, Guitars, Keyboards, Cover Art, Engineer, Mixing, Producer
Christopher Franke - Drums, Percussion, Synthesized Percussion, Synthesizers, Producer

Pete Beaulieu - Engineering
Thomas Heimann-Trosien - Reissue Engineer
Mark Weinberg - Sleeve Design
Antony Amos - Project Coordinator
Monique Froese - Design, Photography
Steve Hammonds - Project Coordinator
Paul Russell - Liner Notes, Sleeve Notes
Becky Stewart - Reissue Design

 C o m m e n t s ,   N o t e s


Recorded august 1973 at the Skyline Studio, Berlin. Remixed and mastered 1984.

Green Desert is an album by electronic artists Tangerine Dream. It was released in 1986 on Jive Records. The album was originally recorded in 1973, and remixed with additional recordings in 1984 by Edgar Froese. This recording was supposed to be released instead of Phaedra in 73. It then disappeared into TD's safe until it was discovered again and released in 1986.



Originally recorded in 1973, Green Desert did not see the light of day until it was remixed and released as part of the In the Beginning box set in 1986, then as its own album later the same year. It is difficult to ascertain how radical this release is from the original recording, but as it stands, it is a logical step between the rawer-produced Atem to the ambient/sequencer-driven style of Phaedra. A key element of this is attributable to Edgar Froese's guitar playing on the title track, an unhurried solo that lasts only about five minutes in the nearly 20-minute piece, yet is easily the most memorable part of the entire song. None of the three shorter songs are as dynamic as the first, each containing a keyboard melody played over synthesized noises and the rhythms of drums, sequencers, or a series of chords. While it is historically vital to the progress of the band, and will definitely be of interest to its fans and those interested in the roots of modern ambient music, it probably will not be as necessary to those outside the genre.

Brian E. Kirby - All Music Guide



Back in summer 1973 Peter Baumann had left Berlin to travel in Nepal and India, so TD were reduced to the duo Edgar Froese and Chris Franke. Virgin Records in London were impressed by the burgeoning following of the group and wanted to sign them up. In Peter Baumann's absence, Edgar Froese and Chris Franke entered the Skyline Studios in Berlin to record Green Desert, using such devices as a rhythm controller and phaser along with the usual synthesisers and keyboards. As Chris Franke remembers: "The rhythm controller came from Italy and looked like something from science fiction with its console of 128 buttons which all lit up. It could be programmed, it was analogue and it was polyphonic! The lights blinked, I had hands on control and later I used it as a sequencer to trigger other synthesisers."

After Peter Baumann had returned, Green Desert was not completed; instead TD began to work on Phaedra that would become their next release. Eventually in 1984, the music material that was to become Green Desert was "found" by Edgar Froese in the archives and reworked to form a complete album. It was remixed using some sounds from the mid-80's, thus the music is more rhythmic and melodic than TD's works from the early 70's. In 1986 the album was released for the first time in album format and as part of the set In The Beginning. The album releases had a totally different cover artwork in the USA and the UK.
Backtracking with Tangerine Dream

Edgar Froese: "There are literally hundreds of hours of unreleased Tangerine Dream music. We own three studios in Germany, and when we're not touring we work in them ten hours a day making music. We have to do music, we can't stop ourselves. Green Desert should have come out before Phaedra. We'd just acquired our first analogue sequencer and were playing around with it, but we got an offer from Virgin Records to use their Manor Studios in 1973, so we abandoned those tapes and started from zero."

(Interview with Johnny Black, thisBEAT, issue 17, April 1986)
Ten years later, in 1996, the CD was re-released again. This re-issue featured a completely new cover artwork by Edgar Froese, based on a photograph by Monika Froese. This cover was used for all re-releases during the next years.

In February 2012 the album was re-released by Esoteric Records on their Reactive label as part of a partial re-issue of the TD back catalogue. The album was completely remastered and comes with a nice 16-page booklet including numerous photos plus an essay written by journalist Malcolm Dome. Unlike most of the albums of this re-release series, Green Desert comes without any bonus track. This version features most of the cover artwork of the previous releases: the cardboard wrapper shows the balloon photo by Monika Froese that was used first in 1996; the booklet shows the cover that initially had been used by Relativity Records for the US vinyl release in 1986, while the cover of the UK 1986 version is printed inside the booklet.

Copyright © 2001-2014 by Michael Berling

 

From 30 Years Of Dreaming

In the summer of 1973, Peter Baumann took a longer journey to Kathmandu in Nepal and India, among other places. Froese and Franke were not restrained by that fact but took the opportunity to record some pieces at the Skyline Studio in Berlin. The music which was to become Green Desert was also made as a sort of demo to show their future record company what they could do. The music was still based on rock instruments like organ, drums and guitar, but it also introduced the sequencer, which was to become the trademark of Tangerine Dream.

There was enough material for a new album, but since Baumann had not been in on the recordings, they agreed to put them aside for a while. I was not put out until 1986 - and only after Edgar Froese had recorded new voices in 1984, re-recorded some of the music and re-mixed all of it. In 1986 it was finally included in a box with six LPs called In The Beginning. This box was released to mark the first - well almost - 10 years of Tangerine Dream as a band.

Due to the very long time under way, it is therefore not exclusively the original material that can be found on the album Green Desert! [...] With the ears of today it sounds a little bit static and slow. It does not seem to reach the same intensity as the other albums from the seventies, but it has its good parts too; it is a little bit more melodic than the previous albums. Even Edgar Froese's very lyrical and melodic way of playing the guitar gets a lot of free space to evolve during the 19 minutes of the title track. Chris Franke makes vivid use of his drums and seems to improvise all the way through the album. This was, however, the last time he made that extensive use of a real drumkit on a Tangerine Dream record; legend has it that he sold his drums soon after these sessions.

© 1999 by Kent Eskildsen



For many people Green Desert was the great lost Tangerine Dream (TD) album. It was the missing link between Atem (1973, see review) and Phaedra (1974) that was gathering dust upon the shelves from 1973 till 1986. According to the liner notes this album was recorded in 1973 between Atem and Phaedra with the only purpose of being a taster for Richard Branson's Virgin-label. This strategy worked as TD were signed to a five year record deal. The money they received was used to invest in new equipment and they promptly made Phaedra with it. Green Desert was set aside until Edgar Froese dug it out of the archives in 1984. He couldn't resist leaving the original tapes the way they were recorded originally. So he added quite a lot of overdubs with equipment that wasn't available yet at the time it was initially recorded.

Thanks to an excellent new reissue of the original album, I had the chance to listen to it. Well, I have to admit that Green Desert doesn't sound like a transition album, but this could be explained by the absence of Peter Baumann, who left TD in 1973 for a few months to travel around Asia with his girlfriend. Only Chris Franke (percussion, VCS3 synth, PRX II rhythm controller) and Edgar Froese (Mellotron, guitar, Solina-strings, MiniMoog, phaser) recorded this album and as a consequence Green Desert is the only TD-record made by these two musicians.

The album opens with the title track which was the A-side of the original vinyl album. It's a broody, atmospheric piece which takes ages to get going, but it features some fine guitar work by Edgar Froese. As the track develops, the drum sequences become more dominant and thus acquire a harder edge. The track also contains some wonderful Mellotron and Solina-strings parts. Next track White Clouds can be seen as the most rhythmic track on the album containing hints of African music due to the strong percussion parts. However, this track contains an overall mellow sound. On Astral Voyager you'll hear sequencer parts which reminded me of the sequencer on The Who's Baba O'Riley and Pink Floyd's On The Run. The final track Indian Summer contains the sound of the waves. It's a very mellow piece on which the Solina-strings and some synthesizers take the lead from time to time. No bonus tracks are added to this reissue.

All in all, Green Desert is a decent album made by Edgar Froese and Chris Franke. I would not describe it as a lost masterpiece, but those who appreciate the music of TD recorded in the seventies and eighties may find this album rewarding, just like me.

Henri Strik (edited by Peter Willemsen)
Background Magazine 2013
 

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