Chameleonic digital music futurists Tangerine Dream constructed their enviable fame upon groundbreaking proto-ambient 70s classics Zeit, Phaedra, and Rubycon, but, to their credit score, they refused to relaxation on their laurels. Through the early 80s, the West Berlin-based trio enthusiastically embraced the ever-evolving potentialities of digital expertise. This quickly spilled over into their releases from this period, equivalent to Exit and White Eagle, which included modern and atypically pop-oriented tracks the likes of “Choronzon,” “Network 23” and “Midnight In Tula.” The sound of the band’s subsequent studio LP, September 1983’s Hyperborea, was additionally influenced by new technological developments. Certainly, within the lead-up to recording the album, TD mainstays Edgar Froese and Johannes Schmoelling acquired two of the primary waveform-sampling computer systems available on the market. These models meant the band might create unbiased constructions and rhythms, and retailer the whole lot on (then) extraordinarily state-of-the-art floppy disks.
Hearken to Hyperborea on Apple Music and Spotify.
Schmoelling later recalled this era with fondness in a 1994 interview with journalist Mark Prendergast, which now options on the TD fan website Voices In The Internet. “Hyperborea was determined by the new generation of digital synthesizers and sampling technology,” he admitted. “We were able to memorize sounds and used a lot of sampled drum sounds. We invented new rhythm structures by using a special arpeggiator technique and so on.”
Launched in late 1983, Hyperborea carried out respectably, peaking at No. 45 within the UK; a strong, intermittently impressed file, it featured a few unlikely, but nice sonic diversions.
The file’s title derived from Greek mythology. “Hyperborea” was a realm “beyond the North Wind” and was believed to be a paradise of types: a legendary, idyllic land the place the solar shone 24 hours a day. Accordingly, a lot of Hyperborea’s music was additionally scorching and humid, although two of the LP’s 4 tracks had been superficially influenced by India fairly than Greece.
Arguably the file’s spotlight, the shimmering, psych-tinged “No Man’s Land” was apparently impressed by the soundtrack from Gandhi. Fittingly, it was constructed round tabla-style beats and insistent drones, and featured distinguished sitar from Edgar Froese, as did the sultry, sequencer-led “Cinnamon Road,” chosen because the LP’s spin-off 45. Although missing in comparable Jap promise, the measured title monitor in the meantime represented Tangerine Dream at their most dignified and courtly, whereas the inscrutable “Sphinx Lightning,” with its dramatic chords, tolling bells, and rhythmic shifts, bade a ultimate farewell to the experimental, 20-minute epics which had been synonymous with the group since 1971’s Alpha Centauri.
Because it turned out, Hyperborea additionally introduced the curtain down on TD’s exceptional decade-long affiliation with Virgin Data, but unemployment was by no means on the playing cards for Edgar Froese and co. Certainly, by the point they recorded 1985’s Le Parc for Clive Calder’s Jive Electro imprint, the group had additionally taken Hollywood by storm and soundtracked a number of films, together with the rom-com Dangerous Business, that includes Tom Cruise in his first main starring position.
