Features
Fifty years ago, editor's notes, concert reports, patches, sleeves, films, books and prices. The other ways in.
Tangerine Dream in Nottingham and Brussels, Jarre's Last Month in the Kitchen: Fifty Years Ago This Month, November 1976
8 November in Nottingham, the 16th in Brussels. Tangerine Dream were on the road with Stratosfear while Jarre finished a record in a Paris kitchen that would arrive the following month. Schulze's concert list has nothing for this month.
The Virgin sleeves, 1974–1979
Six covers, one photographer, and why these records looked like nothing else in the shop. The design that made a German band look like the future.
Sorcerer (1977)
Friedkin's doomed masterpiece, four men hauling nitroglycerine through a jungle, and a score written before a single frame was shot.
Heard in Japan: Vangelis in the NHK broadcast records
Search NHK's broadcast records for Vangelis and 69 entries come up. From 1988 to 1993 most of them belong to a satellite programme called Audiographic, and the first of those lists the opening three tracks of China in album order.
The Night Of: Tangerine Dream at the Royal Albert Hall, 2010
On 1 April 2010 Tangerine Dream played the Zeitgeist Concert at London's Royal Albert Hall, 35 years after their first concert there on 2 April 1975. We read the three-CD live album of that night against 1975.
In Their Own Words: Schulze in 1980
In an autumn 1980 interview Klaus Schulze declared that the eighties were electronic. He was launching Dig It, a record made on a single digital synthesizer. The same interview also lists the old gear he was taking on stage.
Fanzine Days: electronic music in a 1976 Argentine magazine
The first issue of Expreso Imaginario, launched in Buenos Aires in August 1976, listed a feature on progressive music on page 14. That page is missing from the Internet Archive scan. We read the pages that survive to see where the synthesizer turns up.
One Record, Many Pressings: Schulze's Silver Edition box
Klaus Schulze's Silver Edition, a limited 10-CD set, came out in November 1993. Discogs lists it as one release, the German National Library as three boxes. There were 2,000 copies, and the music came back in new forms in 2000 and 2009.
Back in the Papers: Irrlicht in the 1973 press
In late 1973 a New York weekly and a Paris monthly wrote about Klaus Schulze's first solo album, Irrlicht. New York said it was not AM radio material. Paris saw a genius of the kind that comes along once a decade.
In Their Own Words: Schulze in 1981
In a 1981 interview Klaus Schulze summed up what mattered most about his own label, IC, in a single sentence. On his official website that answer now carries a short bracketed reply from his business partner.
Heard in Japan: Crossover Eleven on NHK FM, 1994
NHK FM's late-night show Crossover Eleven alternated music with short read-aloud stories. NHK's broadcast records list Tangerine Dream and Vangelis on its first part in 1994, but not what was played.
In Their Own Words: Schulze in 1984
In a January 1984 interview Klaus Schulze said Mirage got great reviews and sold next to nothing. The official website that carries the interview puts a note right beside that answer saying the opposite.
The Night Of: May 1997, the Oxygène tour opens
On 3 May 1997 Jean-Michel Jarre opened his Oxygène tour at the Zénith in Toulon. The man who filled city squares with hundreds of thousands took his music indoors, for 36 nights.
Fanzine Days: WAVES no. 5, 1990, and the Tour de Trance
Issue 5 of the German electronic music fanzine WAVES, 1990. A musician about to go out on his Tour de Trance says he sold almost all his gear, and the news pages of the same issue are full of records you could not buy.
Heard in Japan: Vangelis and the Japanese film Antarctica
In the summer of 1983, as the Japanese film Antarctica opened, two 7-inch singles carried its name. One was Vangelis's theme. The other came out first, and Vangelis had nothing to do with it.
In Their Own Words: Schulze in 1993
In March 1993, at the end of an interview packed with equipment talk, Klaus Schulze said he had no idea about technology. The line, and the moment it came from.
Fanzine Days: SYNTORAMA, Spain 1984
We read the four 1984 issues of SYNTORAMA, a typewritten electronic music fanzine from Rentería in the Basque Country, and how its readers got hold of Tangerine Dream, Schulze, Jarre, Vangelis and Kitaro.
The Night Of: December 2007, the Théâtre Marigny
In December 2007, at the Théâtre Marigny in Paris, Jean-Michel Jarre and three other players performed Oxygène, a record he had made alone in 1976, on the old synthesizers.
Back in the Papers: how Blackdance was received in 1974
In 1974 and early 1975, British local papers and American and French magazines reviewed Klaus Schulze's Blackdance. What split them was the opera singer on side two.
In Their Own Words: Klaus Schulze, summer 1976
In a 1976 summer interview Klaus Schulze answered the charge that a synthesizer is not an instrument. One line about guitars, violins and trees, and the moment it came out of.
Heard in Japan: forty years of Kitaro in Japanese library catalogues
Kitaro as Japan's National Diet Library and the university catalogue CiNii record him. A 1981 book from Kodansha, Silk Road piano scores in 1984, the same two documentary episodes catalogued three times from 1987, and a CD in 2024.
Fanzine Days: what WAVES told its readers in 1992
We read the four 1992 issues of WAVES, a German fanzine for electronic music. Schulze's manager on a chaotic Spanish tour, two reviews that buried Rockoon, Jarre's eclipse concert that never happened, and a reviewer unsure where to file Kitaro.
Back in the Papers: what the 1975 press heard in Timewind
In the autumn of 1975 British newspapers and two French monthlies reviewed Klaus Schulze's Timewind. The argument was whether this machine-made music was cold or warm.
The 1990s: where did this music go?
A British magazine called them dinosaurs; within the decade the techno generation treated them as ancestors. Schulze and Pete Namlook, Jarre and the Orb, Vangelis's 1492, Kitaro's Golden Globe, and Tangerine Dream's seven Grammy nominations.
Tangerine Dream now: after Froese
Edgar Froese died in Vienna in January 2015, and Tangerine Dream did not stop. The records and shows of Thorsten Quaeschning, Hoshiko Yamane and Paul Frick, and the dates still to come.
Klaus Schulze in Berlin, Tangerine Dream's Stratosfear: October 1976, Fifty Years Ago
Klaus Schulze at the Metamusik Festival in West Berlin, Stratosfear in the shops, Tangerine Dream back on the road. What happened in October 1976.
One Hour for First-Time Listeners: Five Artists, Five Tracks
One track each from Kitaro, Vangelis, Jarre, Tangerine Dream and Klaus Schulze. Short to long, melody to repetition. About 63 minutes in all.
Force Majeure: Edgar Froese's Autobiography, 2017
Pre-sold in 2014, Tangerine Dream's autobiography came out two years and eight months after its author died. 394 pages in German, 381 in English. What is in it, and how to read it.
Autumn 1981: Jarre plays China
A few records played on the radio became an invitation. October 1981: two shows in Beijing, three in Shanghai, 15 tons of gear, a laser harp and the last bus home.
Vangelis's Nemo Studios, London
The top floor of an old school building near Marble Arch, where Vangelis made almost everything from 1975 to 1987. A studio nobody else could book, and the records that came out of it.
NHK's Silk Road and Kitaro
Permission asked for on a bullet train, 450,000 feet of film shot by three crews, and a New Year special that turned out to be an audition. NHK's 1980 Silk Road series and Kitaro's music.
The Oxygène Cover: Michel Granger's Earth
The Earth peeling open to show a skull. Where Michel Granger's watercolour on Jean-Michel Jarre's 1976 Oxygène came from, how it became the face of the record, and how often Granger came back to Jarre's sleeves.
What Is the Berlin School?
The name this site uses every day. Where it came from, as far as anyone can tell, how to recognise it by ear, its two pillars Tangerine Dream and Klaus Schulze, and where it parts company with Kraftwerk's Düsseldorf.
14 July 1979, Place de la Concorde
Jarre's free Bastille Day concert on the Place de la Concorde, 1979. A reporter that night counted 150,000; Jarre says a million. Nobody really knows.
West Berlin in the Seventies: The City This Music Grew Up In
A back room that opened only after the theatre closed, one tape recorder in a rented factory, a Moog nobody could work in a corner of a studio. The addresses and dates of the West Berlin that raised Tangerine Dream and Klaus Schulze.
Vangelis at the Movies: Chariots of Fire to Blade Runner
Vangelis slept through his Oscar. From wildlife films to Chariots of Fire, Blade Runner and The Bounty: why the cinema held more music than the record.
Jarre's Oxygène and Vangelis's Albedo 0.39: September 1976, Fifty Years Ago
On 15 September 1976 Jarre settled on a painting of the Earth with a skull inside for his album cover. Nine days later Vangelis released a record named after how much light the Earth reflects.
What the 1980s did to electronic music
Instruments got cheap, machines learned to talk, and the twenty-minute piece became three. The decade this sound scattered into cinemas, stadiums and clubs.
The backdrop that gave birth to these sounds in the 1970s
A generation that inherited ruins picked up an instrument with no past. How that decade, and that ground, produced this music.
The night Tangerine Dream got banned from churches
Three thousand expected, six thousand came, and the coronation church of the kings of France got Tangerine Dream banned from Catholic buildings.