Tangerine Dream - Ricochet (1975)

If I was to choose 10 CDs as an ideal collection for living on a desert island, Tangerine Dream's Ricochet would be one of them. This is one of my all time favorite albums... and if anyone among you, dear blog visitors, does not know it, do you a favor... and discover it now !

Ricochet is an album that, more than thirty years after its release, does not sound outdated or old-fashioned... It kept all its mystery and beauty, it is among the few great masterpieces of the German electronic music of the seventies.

The basic materials are live recordings during concerts in England and France by the trio Peter Baumann, Chris Franke and Edgar Froese, but these materials were edited, mixed and reorganized in studio, in order to create these two long and splendid tracks.

Tangerine Dream's previous albums, Phaedra and Rubycon, already featured electronic sequences, but they were still minimal and experimental. In Ricochet, sequences are at the forefront and create innovative harmonic, melodic and rythmical patterns. Nobody used Moog sequencers in such a way, beyond the mere repetition of loops or basic grooves, as a leading melodic voice. And I don't see anything equivalent in the more recent electronic music relying on computers. 

Everything is perfect in these two tracks, from the haunting romantic piano notes opening part two to the spacy guitar leimotiv of part one, from the overdub of drums upon some bass rythm to the use of delays on the most melodic sequences.

Ricochet contains the quintessence of the concerts of the Dream in the seventies, a flight outer space, very far out, a psychedelic travel through the waves of the sound, and a very human and romantic feeling, between rock and classical music...

Absolute masterwork...

link: mp3 / 320

TDRic.zip

password: olduvai