Live Tangerine Dream

Another day another Tangerine Dream post... this seems appropriate after this morning's Can post, but yesterday I stumbled upon news of a forthcoming 4CD Tangerine Dream live set, featuring two concerts from the mid-70's. Both concerts, Reims Cathedral from 1974, and Mannheim, 1976 are well known to Tangerine Dream collectors, forming part of the fan curated Tangerine Tree live series (Trees 30 and 13 in the series). I've been revisiting both concerts and both are excellent representations of the group's live work, featuring music not heard on their studio albums. The Reims show, one of the group's fabled Cathedral Concerts, is an 85min set of nebulous improvised themes reminiscent of Phaedra and Rubycon, while Mannheim is more structured and rhythmic, sounding like the official live album Ricochet, the studio album Stratosfear and anticipates the music the band cut for Sorcerer. The second movement of the Mannheim show is especially interesting, as it sounds like the band is performing a live rendition of the Celestial Voices section of the Pink Floyd song A Saucerful of Secrets...

The Cherry Red imprint Reactive/Esoteric is behind this 4CD set and based on their fine track record with previous Tangerine Dream re-issues, I am looking forward to upgrading my CD-Rs to official discs. Due for release in October, more info here