In the course of the late 80s, Tangerine Dream’s fortunes briefly seemed to be on the wane. Prime mover Edgar Froese’s first lieutenant of 17 years, Christopher Franke, departed in 1987 after 17 years in harness, whereas the band’s contract with Jive Electro expired following the discharge of the opinion-dividing, William Blake-inspired Tyger. But the band remained astonishingly prolific, releasing a number of albums and soundtracks earlier than the last decade’s finish, together with Optical Race, the Miracle Mile rating, and Lily On The Seashore.
Ought to Froese have opted to throw within the towel at this juncture, few would have blamed him. In spite of everything, no matter Tyger’s vital wobble, TD’s popularity remained second to none. With virtually 20 years’ energetic service on the clock, Froese’s pioneering digital outfit had amassed a leviathan of a again catalog which included groundbreaking releases, amongst them proto-ambient masterpiece Zeit and revered, Virgin-released highlights Phaedra, Rubycon, and Pressure Majeure, whereas his band’s 80s albums had regularly embraced altering developments and advances in digital expertise.
To his credit score, nonetheless, Froese persevered, signing with ex-bandmate Peter Baumann’s LA-based Non-public Music imprint and recording 1988’s Optical Race as a duo together with his proficient new second-in-command, Paul Haslinger. Once more maintaining with technological advances, the tracks had been programmed on a newly acquired Atari ST laptop and, whereas not a industrial success, the LP featured a few of Tangerine Dream’s most accessible music thus far, together with the North African-tinged “Marakesh” and the exhilarating, motorik title reduce.
Alongside the not too long ago recruited Ralf Wadephul, Froese and Haslinger promoted Optical Race with an intensive U.S. tour within the fall of ’88, but Wadephul’s tenure proved transient and TD reverted to a nucleus of Froese and Haslinger for his or her second Non-public Music studio set, October 1989’s Lily On The Seashore. Superficially a logical extension of the shiny Optical Race, the report was once more filled with modern, electro-pop exercises reminiscent of “Paradise Cove” and “Gecko,” although “Desert Drive’” spacey BPMs and neat, house-inspired piano figures steered that Froese and Haslinger remained conscious about developments in up to date membership tradition.
Not like Optical Race, nonetheless, Lily On The Seashore tempered the band’s growing reliance upon digitization with some decisive natural textures. Devotees had been heartened to listen to the return of Froese’s hovering lead guitar on “Too Hot For My Chinchilla,” whereas his son Jerome (shortly to enroll full-time together with his dad) stepped in to play the same position on the stylish “Radio City.” Haslinger’s rippling piano, in the meantime, dominated the attractive, sparse “Twenty-Nine Palms,” and the shape-shifting finale of “Long Island Sunset” was buoyed by sax and flute from guesting jazz fusionist Hubert Waldner.
Frustratingly for followers, Froese and co-opted to not tour throughout ’89, and alternatives from Lily On The Seashore had been thus premiered through the band’s one-off present at Berlin’s Werner-Seelenbinder Halle in February 1990. Behind the scenes, nonetheless, they remained feverishly energetic, working up alternatives for Vacation spot Berlin: the soundtrack for the spectacular movie of the identical identify, which captured 360-degree footage of the divided metropolis within the interval instantly previous to the autumn of the Berlin Wall.
