Phaedra

Walking in a hazy mist while clouds touch your face. 4/5

Listened to in original 2024 list - Swapped for Single Rider Songbook to fill day.

I wasn't a teenager in Germany in the 70s 8 guess

expecting big vaporwave energy here i listened to this i remember ghost noises, ambient whoo-woos, synth etc

It was a fine electronic album.

música psicodélica? tudo tem limite

Wild sounding, atmospheric, kind of cinematic. Several attributes of a great ambient record.

Could only listen to two songs on Spotify - they sound like pioneers though.

Probably the best experimental electronic album, or anything close to it, that has been on this list. I can see why it's considered ambient with a mix of prog rock. While some other albums in this ilk (Eno-Bowie, Kraftwerk, etc.) have rubbed me the wrong way this one did the opposite. Despite it mostly being minimalistic beats and ambient/environmental sounds it gave me the warm and fuzzies while the other ones turned me off. Much better than the contemporaries elsewhere in the genre as I found myself mostly enjoying this as opposed to hoping it would be over, though I can't really figure out why. I feel like this album would work well at night on headphones while trying to wind down. Even if I wouldn't put Phaedra at the top of any lists, I can see why Tangerine Dream and/or their albums are often cited as an influence on electronic and experimental music. I feel like I got a decent first taste of Tangerine, but would only find diminishing returns if I were to delve deeper into their catalog. Not my favorite, but glad to have sampled some Tangerine Dream. 2.34 stars

Very deep and engrossing despite seeming like pretty simple music. Tangerine Dream has made some all time great soundtracks for movies but their studio stuff is even more impressive

Too ambient for me I’m afraid I hoped for something with more drive and style. But I’ve learned that I don’t enjoy ambient styles.

I have spent decades avoiding this album. Whenever I encountered it in record shops, I would recoil from it almost as though I were allergic. The sleeve, the name, the reputation, the entire cultural package seemed to promise forty minutes of earnest German electronic experimentation that I could quite happily live without. I associated it with a particular sort of 1970s sixth-form intellectual seriousness, the music of young men who would sit cross-legged on the floor discussing the future of humanity while someone else tried unsuccessfully to organise a game of table football. And the extraordinary thing about finally listening to it was that it sounded exactly as I had always expected it to sound. That is an important distinction. I wasn’t surprised to encounter synthesiser sequences, vast electronic landscapes, unfamiliar rhythms or passages in which recognisable melody seemed almost an afterthought. I’d anticipated all of that perfectly well. What I had completely misjudged was my response to it. Within minutes I was absorbed, increasingly astonished by the beauty of what I was hearing. By the end, having listened to four instrumental compositions lasting scarcely forty minutes between them, I wanted to start the whole thing again. I can’t remember many occasions on which my expectations have been overturned quite so comprehensively without the object of those expectations turning out to be substantially different from what I’d imagined. My first musical reference points were Kraftwerk’s Autobahn and Erik Satie. Not particularly Satie’s harmonies or melodic language, but his idea of musique d’ameublement, or furniture music: music that can coexist with the ordinary activities of a room without demanding the exclusive attention of everybody inside it. Autobahn suggested movement and repetition, while Satie offered the notion of music as part of an environment rather than something presented for formal contemplation. At first, Phaedra seemed to occupy the territory between them. Electronic pulses supplied a sense of motion, while vast washes of sound moved around those pulses, apparently independent of them. There was no particular urgency to arrive anywhere. The music could be followed attentively, but it also seemed capable of existing without requiring me to follow its every movement. Then I turned off the lights. That made an enormous difference. The music became emphatically spatial. Without visual distractions, sounds acquired a more convincing sense of location, distance and movement. The electronic washes seemed to pass through an imaginary environment like clouds, approaching and receding, sometimes apparently close enough to touch, at other times occupying some enormous distance beyond the limits of perception. The bass pulse provided a fixed point against which this movement could be measured. I have previously thought about how stereo panning supplies lateral position while reverberation and delay create the impression of distance. Here, those principles were being used to construct something approaching an entire acoustic world. Rather than furnishing the physical room I occupied, the music seemed to replace it. This distinction became increasingly important. Phaedra was certainly capable of being ambient, but the experience was much more than having agreeable electronic sounds in the background. It was possible to inhabit the music, to allow its extraordinary sense of space to become the dominant environment. And it was beautiful. Really, extraordinarily beautiful. The seventeen-minute title composition establishes much of the album’s language. A deep, insistent bass pulse provides an underlying structure while synthesised patterns emerge and interact. Some sound like multiple interconnected arpeggiators, although the technology is more accurately understood in terms of analogue sequencing. There is something fascinating about the way these apparently simple sequences can produce complexity through their changing relationships. Their repetitions do not merely mark time. They create movement, anticipation and, increasingly, tension. Around them, great expanses of electronic sound seem to exist almost independently of the underlying rhythm. What I found particularly intriguing was the emotional contradiction. The drifting washes were often immensely soothing, but the lower-register sounds could be deeply unsettling. Some resembled warnings or portents, suggesting something immense approaching from beyond the limits of what I could perceive. Nothing was clearly identified, and nothing arrived to explain the apparent threat. The music simply allowed the sense of foreboding to coexist with its beauty. It was simultaneously relaxing and disturbing, and I found the combination enormously appealing. This is where my thoughts began moving towards musique concrète. Strictly speaking, Tangerine Dream’s methods are different. The French tradition developed around the recording, manipulation and assembly of sounds, whereas Phaedra largely generates its materials electronically. But the resulting listening experience has significant similarities. Sounds become compositional objects. Their timbre, density, duration, apparent location and movement matter at least as much as any conventional melodic or harmonic function. I found myself listening to sounds entering an environment, interacting with other sounds and disappearing again. They could be treated almost as physical events rather than notes belonging to a recognisable musical argument. Yet there was clearly an argument taking shape. One of the title track’s most astonishing passages begins with increasingly insistent sequenced figures, building momentum until they suddenly disappear. What remains is a Mellotron choir, suspended almost impossibly in the space that the sequencing previously occupied. The music then moves into an extraordinarily sparse passage. I found this absolutely stunning. Its emotional power comes largely from subtraction. The preceding activity has established a sense of urgency, conditioning the listener to expect further development or escalation. Instead, the machinery falls silent and what remains acquires a significance it could not have possessed in the earlier, denser texture. There is no need for a conventional harmonic resolution. The sudden withdrawal of sound becomes the expressive event. That moment also demonstrated something important about the relationship between composition and improvisation. The album’s creation involved a fluid and sometimes unpredictable relationship between musicians and machinery. Yet the resulting piece possesses a remarkably convincing dramatic shape. It doesn’t matter terribly whether every detail had been planned in advance. What matters is that the music unfolds with an apparent understanding of tension, release, density and space. Near the end, following a silence, I heard something that sounded unmistakably like children playing in a playground. It had the quality of an ambient field recording, something ordinary and everyday intruding upon an entirely artificial landscape. The effect was wildly unsettling. After seventeen minutes of unfamiliar electronic sounds, the apparent emergence of something recognisably human ought perhaps to have been reassuring. Instead, those distant children’s voices seemed ghostly and inaccessible. The familiar had become stranger than the synthetic world that preceded it. I don’t know precisely what the recording contains at that point, and I’m not going to pretend that my impression establishes its source. But the experience was extraordinary. It completed the piece by introducing an apparent fragment of everyday life that seemed almost impossibly remote from the world the music had constructed. The second composition, Mysterious Semblance at the Strand of Nightmares, took me somewhere rather different. The Mellotron is immediately recognisable. No other instrument sounds quite like it. There is something peculiar about its combination of orchestral associations and audible artificiality, those imperfect recordings producing a timbre that is simultaneously familiar and otherworldly. It has a quality that a more technically accomplished simulation could easily lose. For roughly the first five minutes, Edgar Froese seems almost unconcerned with the usual obligations of rhythm and time signature. The Mellotron strings drift, swell and recede. Harmonic tensions appear and dissolve, but without providing the usual means of measuring musical progress. There are no regular bars through which to count one’s passage, no obvious rhythmic structure against which everything else must be organised. This was an odd sensation, but an immensely pleasurable one. The music seemed almost unfettered by conventional time. Yet it never felt arbitrary or undisciplined. Its development was measured through changes of sound colour, density, harmonic pressure and emotional weight. Eventually, a more staccato left-hand figure emerged and began marking something resembling a regular rhythm. But that phase came and went. The piece had no particular obligation to sustain its pulse once it had established one. Other electronically generated noises gradually joined the Mellotron, becoming increasingly prominent until the original instrumental sound was almost overwhelmed. Again I found myself thinking of musique concrète, with the familiar musical voice gradually submerged within a changing collection of electronic events. The boundary between instrument and environment became increasingly difficult to establish. The Mellotron was not simply performing against a background; it was becoming part of a much larger soundscape. I should perhaps acknowledge that I am precisely the sort of insufferable twat who enjoys the Beatles’ Revolution 9. The comparison occurred naturally. Both pieces allow sound itself to become the principal compositional material, without requiring conventional melody, harmony or rhythm to justify the listener’s attention. Where Revolution 9 constructs its disturbing collage from fragments of a recognisable world, Mysterious Semblance seems to begin with an identifiable instrument and progressively dissolve its identity. But what impressed me most was not the similarity of experimental methods. It was the extraordinary emotional sensitivity of Froese’s performance. My immediate judgement when the piece finished was that it had been gorgeous, sensitive, weighted and measured. Measured is a particularly interesting word to use about something so largely unconstrained by metre. Yet it was precisely the word I wanted. I was responding to the judgement with which sounds were introduced, sustained and allowed to disappear; the apparent deliberation of the performance and the emotional weight of the intervals between events. It was desolate without being ugly, experimental without being arbitrary, and extremely affecting without ever appearing to insist upon an emotional response. I could listen to it over and over. By this point my initial expectation of an endurance test had become almost comically irrelevant. I was thoroughly absorbed in the album and beginning to think I might have been born seven or eight years too late. Movements of a Visionary initially brought the BBC Radiophonic Workshop to mind. Small oscillator noises suggested short-wave radio interference, electronic signals being received from somewhere beyond the room. Once again, the music began almost without a recognisable rhythmic structure. Then enormous percussive sounds appeared, treated with tape echo. Each impact generated a sequence of diminishing repetitions, establishing an awareness of time without necessarily imposing conventional metre. Gradually, more rapidly sequenced monophonic synthesiser figures emerged, and the piece acquired a growing sense of direction. It was here that I arrived at what seems the most useful description of the album’s compositional method. Argument by accretion. Rather than introduce a conventional musical theme and proceed through recognisable stages of development, Tangerine Dream allow elements to accumulate, interact and change their relationships. Repeated patterns become more insistent, electronic sounds occupy different parts of the imagined environment, and a sense of structure gradually emerges from their combined activity. The music appears to discover its direction through the act of proceeding. But accretion is only half the process. Once the layers have accumulated, their removal can become just as expressive. Eventually the ambient sounds in Movements of a Visionary withdraw, leaving an insistent Moog sequence accompanied by something I could only describe as a digitally degraded church organ. That description is an analogy for the timbre, not a suggestion that digital processing was involved in making the record. The organ-like sound suggested something ancient, solemn and monumental, while the sequencer continued its busy repetitions. The rhythm itself was particularly intriguing. It reminded me of a Congolese thumb piano, or likembe, being played insistently in what felt like an unusual time signature. I couldn’t establish whether the metre was actually irregular or whether displaced accents and interlocking patterns were creating the impression of a more complicated rhythmic organisation. But the resemblance was striking. There was something delightful about this electronic mechanism unexpectedly acquiring the characteristics of a traditional acoustic instrument. And then another image occurred to me. It felt like the workings of computers set against an eternity of space. The sequencer was finite, repetitive and apparently purposeful, diligently carrying out its little operations. Around it stretched something almost immeasurable, a vast electronic landscape apparently indifferent to all that mechanical activity. The sequence counted time while the surrounding environment seemed to exist beyond it. I found that image immensely evocative. It also helped explain why the album continued to sound futuristic more than fifty years after its release. The technology may be recognisably historical, but the imaginary environments it constructs do not feel confined to 1974. The music seems less interested in predicting a particular future than in suggesting worlds whose rules we do not yet understand. The final piece, Sequent C’, offers a remarkable contrast in scale. After the enormous electronic landscapes of the preceding compositions, Peter Baumann gives us a little over two minutes of recorder and tape echo. The recorder acquires an almost reedy quality through the processing, and the overlapping phrases produce fleeting harmonies and dissonances. It is slow, soothing and unsettling simultaneously. What particularly delighted me was the way successive phrases interact. Each leaves an audible trace, so that the next phrase enters a musical environment already populated by the echoes of what has gone before. The resulting harmonies need not have been played simultaneously. They arise through the accumulated consequences of the performance. Once again, composition by accretion. Here, though, the principle is demonstrated with exceptional economy. The vast arrays of electronic sounds have given way to a single acoustic instrument and a recording effect, yet the method remains recognisably the same. It was a beautiful conclusion, intimate and delicate but no less adventurous than the larger pieces. And so four compositions, each possessing a distinct character, had produced an album with remarkable unity. It was not simply a collection of electronic experiments. A consistent musical intelligence seemed to govern the handling of time, space, repetition and change throughout. That would have been sufficient to make the album an extraordinary discovery. But during the listening, another argument had begun to develop, one informed both by the music and by my understanding of the generation that created it. I had already read Julian Cope’s Krautrocksampler, so I was familiar with the broad historical interpretation of the West German experimental scene. But I also spent some time in West Germany in the early 1980s, approximately seven years after Phaedra was recorded, and I remember something of how young Germans talked about the preceding generation. There was considerable anger and disgust. It wasn’t confined to the people who had openly embraced National Socialism. There was a particular contempt for those who had maintained their ordinary lives and domestic comforts while the country descended into catastrophe. People who preserved their habits, routines and outward respectability while appalling things were happening around them. They just wanted their comforts, was the sentiment I remember. What disturbed these young people was not merely the existence of evil, but the ability of supposedly ordinary, respectable society to accommodate itself to it. Normality could become an instrument of moral evasion. I don’t offer this recollection as a comprehensive explanation of Germany’s history. Nor would I suggest that bourgeois respectability somehow caused Nazism. The historical relationships are considerably more complicated. But the accusation was real within the generational conversations I remember, and it helps explain something about the profound desire to escape inherited cultural assumptions. The music of Tangerine Dream, Can and Neu! can be understood, at least in part, as different attempts to create a musical future not dictated by the conventions of the past. Their methods were hardly identical. Can pursued collective improvisation, rhythmic interaction and an often astonishing sense of groove. Neu! explored the possibilities of persistent repetition and forward momentum. Tangerine Dream, particularly on Phaedra, seemed interested in constructing entirely new sonic environments, freeing musical events from the usual expectations of rhythm, structure, instrumental identity and destination. I began imagining the experience of attending one of their concerts in the early 1970s, sitting on the floor with other young people, surrendering to unfamiliar sounds without the conventional expectations of performance and audience behaviour. It seemed to me the ultimate escapist music. And I didn’t mean that as a criticism. There is a considerable difference between escaping from reality and attempting to escape the assumptions through which reality has traditionally been understood. In this case, the desire to imagine an unfamiliar future might itself have been a response to a past that seemed morally intolerable. One thought became particularly important. The Nazis tended to favour art that celebrated certainties: recognisable ideals, prescribed meanings, heroic figures, authority and hierarchy. Much experimental modernism was condemned precisely because it challenged those expectations. What struck me about Phaedra was its almost complete immersion in uncertainty. It has no heroes, no obvious narrative, no assured destination and frequently no conventional means of measuring musical progress. Its sounds may be beautiful or threatening, familiar or alien, but they rarely explain themselves. They can disappear without resolution, or become transformed simply because something else has entered the soundscape. And none of this uncertainty feels like a defect requiring correction. On the contrary, I found the experience immensely pleasurable. Where authoritarian aesthetics demanded certainty, Phaedra made uncertainty habitable. That is an interpretation rather than a claim to have uncovered a conscious political programme within every sequence and electronic wash. I wouldn’t want to reduce the musical achievement to an illustration of postwar history. The record’s beauty exists independently of the argument I have developed around it. But the historical context matters, particularly when considering the extraordinary effort by West German musicians of this generation to establish an expressive vocabulary that did not simply reproduce inherited conventions. It also brought me back to Joy Division’s Closer, which I had previously interpreted in terms of a related historical and moral predicament. My conclusion about Closer had been that it was not primarily an album about depression. It was an expression of horror: the horror of knowing what humanity had demonstrated itself capable of doing, and of recognising that there was no adequate explanation or justification for it. The question I had arrived at was, How do we continue, knowing who we are, but continue we must? Listening to Phaedra, I began to recognise two expressions of the same urge. Joy Division confronted a present in which the inherited moral reassurances of civilisation had become inadequate. Their music appeared to ask how people could continue living with the knowledge of historical atrocity, while refusing the consolation of easy answers. Tangerine Dream seemed to be searching in another direction. Instead of attempting to explain the present, they were imagining the possibility of a future that did not have to conform to the past. The music of both groups can be heard as existing beyond easy reassurance. Both use repetition and artificial spatial environments, and both allow mechanical insistence to coexist with profound emotional unease. But Phaedra offers something that, at least during this listening, felt unusually hopeful. It doesn’t supply answers. It demonstrates the possibility of living without them. This may also help explain why the album has aged so remarkably well. Attempts to predict the future often end up becoming quaint records of the period in which they were made. Yet Phaedra still sounds futuristic. Its technological language has aged, but the possibilities it suggests remain open. Perhaps a future without prescribed meanings cannot become obsolete in quite the same way as a future imagined in terms of particular machines or social arrangements. All of this was occupying my thoughts as I finished the album. But the most unexpected discovery came afterwards, when I began considering why I’d avoided it for so long. I had mentioned those earnest sixth-formers at the beginning of the listening. The image had seemed amusing enough: solemn young men with expensive records, established academic confidence and an enthusiasm for music of great intellectual seriousness. But there was something quite specific behind my reaction. I went to a grammar school, having passed the eleven-plus examination without any particular difficulty. During my primary-school years, the examination had changed. What had previously involved an essay and mathematics proficiency had become, in my recollection, an abstract-reasoning or IQ-style test. That suited me perfectly well. The examination was easy. What was considerably less easy was being a pupil at the school I’d qualified to attend. I wasn’t the neurotypical grammar-school type. I was an outsider, and for years I was a very uncomfortable, frightened outsider. The ability to pass an examination did not confer the ability to belong within the particular social and educational culture into which that examination had admitted me. That distinction matters. Grammar-school success was not simply about intellectual ability. It also involved knowing how to inhabit the institution, understanding its expectations and possessing the confidence to move through its social world as though you naturally belonged there. I didn’t. And I had come to associate music like Phaedra with the comfortable children who had done well, who seemed secure in that environment and whose cultural interests appeared to be another expression of their confidence and belonging. The record had acquired a social identity in my imagination long before I listened to it. I wasn’t necessarily rejecting synthesiser sequences or the absence of conventional song structures. I was rejecting something associated with a world in which I had felt profoundly out of place. I cannot prove that this association accounts for my entire reaction over the intervening decades, and I wouldn’t want to construct a neat psychological explanation where the evidence doesn’t justify one. But when the connection occurred to me, it felt remarkably convincing. It also exposed an extraordinary irony. I had associated Phaedra with a comfortable, successful and implicitly establishment-minded group of young people. Yet the music itself, in the historical interpretation I’d been developing throughout the morning, represented an attempt to escape an inherited establishment and its certainties. I had imagined myself alienated from the people who listened to this music, while the musicians themselves may have been motivated by forms of alienation with which I had considerably more sympathy than I’d realised. Something I had said to Brian and Duncan earlier in the week suddenly became relevant. I told them that I rather enjoyed judging books by their covers, because I enjoyed the shock of discovering I was wrong. And this was a particularly unusual example of that pleasure. The cover hadn’t misled me about what the music would sound like. Nor had I been mistaken about the kind of techniques and instrumentation I’d encounter. I’d simply assumed that I wouldn’t enjoy any of it. Instead, I found myself captivated by music that was sensitive, intelligent, emotionally weighted and frequently breathtakingly beautiful. Its freedom from conventional time signatures felt liberating rather than irritating. Its electronic abstractions were absorbing rather than indulgent. Its reluctance to explain itself was an invitation rather than an obstacle. The record had remained the same throughout those decades of avoidance. My relationship with what it represented had changed sufficiently for me to hear it without the old social associations determining the experience. And perhaps the greatest discovery was not that I had acquired an entirely new musical taste. My enjoyment of Revolution 9, musique concrète, unconventional rhythmic structures and electronic experimentation suggests that much of the necessary enthusiasm was already present. What I had mistaken for an aesthetic objection may have been, at least partly, an old social one. There is something rather pleasing about a record that so thoroughly immerses itself in uncertainty having exposed the weakness of one of my own long-held certainties. But I wouldn’t want that personal discovery to overshadow the music. Phaedra is magnificent on its own terms. Its four compositions demonstrate an astonishing command of electronic sound as expressive material. Their development through accretion, interaction and subtraction creates dramatic movement without depending upon familiar musical forms. Their handling of rhythm and musical time is adventurous without being careless. Their imagined spaces are vast, strange and remarkably convincing. And their beauty is not incidental to their experimental character. It arises from it. I had expected something intellectually impressive but emotionally remote. Instead, the album was capable of moving me through a Mellotron choir emerging from silence, a desolate passage of slowly changing strings, a little electronic sequence persisting against the suggestion of infinite space, and the delicate overlapping echoes of a recorder. The music can be restful, disturbing, solemn, playful, mysterious and deeply humane, sometimes within the same passage. It also seems remarkably resistant to the passage of time. More than fifty years after its creation, it continues to suggest possibilities that have not been exhausted by subsequent developments in electronic music. I began the morning expecting an endurance test. I finished wanting to listen to the album repeatedly, and feeling rather fortunate to have finally encountered it without the prejudices that had kept me away. Four extraordinary pieces, each possessing its own identity, yet connected by a coherent and remarkably sensitive approach to the organisation of sound. Perhaps the simplest way to express what I discovered is that Phaedra creates a world in which uncertainty is neither a threat to be conquered nor a problem to be solved. It is the very condition that makes the music beautiful. And, with the lights off and the headphones on, I found that an extraordinarily lovely place to be.

nice

Soundtrack music. Good soundtrack music, but just background stuff.

Bleep bloop bloop krautrock

All my homies love kosmische musik. So important for the future of electronic music, and some pretty banging textures and sounds at that.

Not bad. Again just really not into electronic music. But this was more varied than modern electronic music at least.

Pioneering electronic album, but not to my taste.

I initially gave this a bad review as the version of the album on Spotify was a 'Deluxe' edition, and nobody would want to listen to 2.5 hours of this music unless they were diehard fans. I sacked it off after track 3. However, once I realised it should be a concise 4-track album at 37 minutes long, I gave it another shot and it was definitely more listenable, less daunting, and easier to finish. Solid ambient focus music. Heard it before? ❌ Listen again? ❌ Rating out of ten? 4️⃣

Hoo boy blast from the past. I used to listen to this record a lot in the mid-70s, but at some point moved on and forgot all about Tangerine Dream. It’s fun to hear this now, though it seems to lack something - I guess I’m come to prefer weirder electronica with random noises and samples here and there like Boards of Canada. This seems more predictable, like the planetarium soundtracks and movie spaceship sequences that we’ve now heard many times since this came out. Despite all that, I’m enjoying "Phaedra" after all this time.

Ethereal, ambient, relaxing, spiritual sci-fi sounding music. Not quite sure how to rate this one but I would say it's a surprise this album is 52 years old, you could have told me this came out in 2024 and I'd not have questioned it. Different but pretty cool.

Chill electro-soundscape music. Depends on the mood I think.

Eerily modern. Gorgeous album to pop on while star gazing

I can see why they did a lot of soundtracks - this would sound great in the background while Roy Scheider or James Caan clenched their jaws. Listened to on its own though, my attention slipped in and out.

I'm conflicted, I definitely prefer vocals but, this album helped me finish my homework and stay focused.

I really enjoyed this. It was quite the psychedelic experience. This would have been revolutionary at the time it came out, albeit very experimental. It's definitely the kind of music my old man would like.

Very spacy sci-fi sounding ambient stuff. I've never quite heard ambient stuff feel so alive! It's like hearing the soundtrack of a distant planet. The standout track here is definitely "Phaedra." I really like it, it's got a kind of tension to it like something is hunting you or about to happen to you. The rest of the album mellows out after its first act, unfortunately. I would for sure listen to some other Tangerine Dream records. This is a tough one to rate because the first song is so rad, I loved it, then the rest kinda faded away, but was still pretty cool just to get lost in. I was reading up on these guys and they were definitely pioneers of electronic music. And it sounds great. Sometimes the pioneering stuff doesn't age particularly well. I think the ingenuity factor mixed with the fact that I mostly really liked and was engaged with my time with the album makes it a surprising 5/5, outta nowhere! Super dope stuff.

This was fine, instrumental 80s electronic

Not for me.

Way weird

meh 2/5

3.0/10 Not digging this at all...

I wish I was smoking the most massive stinkiest joint instead of commuting to work right now while listening to this. Sequent C would also be good music to bleed out in the snow. It's a little too ambient for my tastes, but it has this serene beauty to it.

weird, highly atmospheric, and strangely haunting. A great album that however requires a very specific vibe and state. An album that I'd love to have. Apparently it is also very influential ot an entire new genre.

When went to youtube music it threw up the 2hrs.40 deluxe version. Nope. If you ever pondered why punk came along listen to this overwrought nonsense.

At a time when I should have easily found my way into the world of Tangerine Dream, I accidentally formed an inaccurate picture of them without good cause. It was back in the 90s when (of course) being already familiar Kraftwerk, I was discovering the less obvious German bands that the coolest of my NME/MM groups were name dropping. These included Can, Faust, Neu! etc but notably not Tangerine Dream. As well as the guitar band name droppers though, it seems I should’ve been paying closer attention to interviews with the IDM musicians I was getting into because ‘Phaedra’ sounds a lot like the Electronic and Ambient Techno that were a major part of my musical diet back then. Without this endorsement I sadly placed TD in the “non-crucial” compartment in my brain and passed over them in the second hand racks which were rife with their albums. I may have missed out by my own stupidity, but I’m going to look at this positively and enjoy discovering Tangerine Dream in the 2020s, and with such a wealth of information now at my fingertips, I’ll be able to dip into their vast discography well informed, and avoid the risk of investing in a dud like might’ve more readily occurred back in the 90s. This is a win for the 1001 book afaic.

Phaedra Tangerine Dream 1974 Genres: Electronica Styles: Krautrock, Berlin School 1. Phaedra (★★★★☆) -Comentario: Demasiado larga, me gustan algunos pasajes, pero difícilmente la escucharía por gusto... 2. Mysterious Semblance At The Strand Of Nightmares (★★★★⯨) 3. Movement Of A Visionary (★★★★⯨) 4. Sequent C (★★★★★) -TOTAL = ★★★★⯨ (4) -Podría ser un 5, aunque es demasiado instrumental y algo a lo que no volvería frecuentemente, pero sin duda es bueno.

It's not like it's bad necessarily

cool but i aint listening to that

the main parts of the pieces were pretty good helped me focus on tasks but the random incomprehensible vocals ruined it for me.

It's amazing that this was created over 50 years ago.

For whatever reason only 2 of the songs were available to listen to on Spotify? So I listened to the last two to see if it was even worth it to try to find the missing 2 songs and.... It was not. This shit is just noise. How are these absolute slop albums on the list of the 1001 albums I HAVE to hear in this lifetime?

Fun week so far - 50s jazz, 80s hardcore punk, now 70s cosmic German electronica. Wish every week brought as much variety. Took me a few listens to get into the vibe. Late at night with headphones was the way. A strange journey.

hard to get into without being on shrooms

Very cool music, really creates a mood, liked reading about how it was produced and alla that

This immediately reminded me of Schaft's Olive and one of the later songs reminded me of one of Masami Tsuchiya's songs from Forest People. I can see this album/band's influence on various musicians I like. I like it and I'd listen to it again and will probably check out more of their work.

Phaedra 2 Mysterious Semblance at the Strand of Nightmares 2.4 Movements of a Visionary 1.7 Sequent C 2 Score: 2.025

Beautiful stuff. I was completely unaware of this artist but will be looking up more. Really fantastic synth sounds from real traditional machines. An awesome mix of ambient style minimalist music and more sophisticated progressions. Love it

Ambient sounds, relisten with lots of time.

Textures and moods that drive an enchantment that is not easily broken.

Meh

If Ross Gheller made an album. Get outta here with this shit.

Ooh, a krautrock album. Haven't had one of those in a while... It's definitely a different kind of krautrock than Can is. Where Can's style of krautrock was more beat-driven and groovy, this is incredibly spacey ambient music. There are no lyrics or even conventional rhythms to latch on to, making this not really a listening experience in the conventional sense. Instead, it produces a calming effect on the listener, like an early precursor to our modern ambient genre. It's definitely not something I thought would be on this list. This album is ranked #25 of 26 albums for 1974. Other 1974 albums rated by me: Sheer Heart Attack(1/26)-5 Queen II(4/26)-4 Pretzel Logic(7/26)-3 Court and Spark(8/26)-4 Here Come The Warm Jets(19/26)-3 Grievous Angel(22/26)-4

Listening in 2026 it’s not overly interesting, but considering the year it came out it pretty impressive

very soothing, i really vibed with this one

285.

Pleasant enough, but at the end of the day kinda one note and sleepy. It was half way through the second play before I realized it started over.

Sounded like a soundtrack for a stage hypnotist.

I am sure at the right time with the right substance this would unlock me or something. On a Monday morning bus with minimal caffeine this is a long, bloated, somehow whiny experience. Extra points though for achieving this in 1974.

Hard to review. On one hand I see how important this is, it’s this experimental soundscape that really bleeds into a lot of future things I enjoy. On the other it’s boring and I didn’t like it.

Eh. It was ok. Very pretty, but still meh.

Okay. Good

Beep bop.

Good album. Ahead of its time.

Expected a little more synth and progression. It's sort of unimpressive background music, as is.

I found this to be interesting if not compelling. Wish it had a bit more melody and bite but it's still quite good

What a find. Sounds exactly like all the lofi and ambient playlists that are abundant right now, but it's clearly the grandaddy of them all. Slightly unsettling at times in the wrong headspace, but thoroughly enjoyed this. Definitely a vinyl buy I reckon.

Zzz...

I loved listening to this album, but I won't be adding it to my list of favorites. It's a very unique, cerebral, and well-crafted instrumental sound, but I don't resonate with it. 2/5.

First listen. I’m either speeding through space or sleeping. Not a knock. Didn’t realize electronic music was the well developed in the mid 70s.

Solid ambient/electronic album - may revisit as music for reading/studying

Do you know what a sequencer is? In short, it’s a tool that lets you input sounds of various pitches and arrange them into a repeating pattern. Well, this album by the avant-garde electronic group Tangerine Dream was the first to be recorded using sequencers; in essence, it pioneered the so-called "Berlin School" of electronic music. That’s an impressive distinction, yet the record ultimately sounds like the soundtrack to an old Soviet space movie. In fact, the whole thing feels just like one of those films: it was probably incredible back in the day, but now the sets look dated and the special effects seem laughable. You might assume that appreciating this music requires a brilliant mind, but when the artists themselves admit that certain melodies sound the way they do because the sequencer’s settings kept drifting, you have to wonder — can this even be called music?

Zzzzzzz

🥱 what?

Way ahead of its time.

3.7 2x really interesting album, unfortunately not available on Spotify, listened on Youtube

What is this now. German electronic music? Let’s check it out. Something new for me. Creepy background music in a trippy cult classic science fiction movie with B special effects. Alien is about to pop out at any moment now. Perhaps it’s not a jump scare after all and we’re discovering life on another planet. But the systems are failing and we’re running out of time. The computer. Good god it’s taken over. We’re gonna die on this fucking ship. Redirect power to manual control goddamnit!! Alright that’s wild. Sitting here at work stressing out toward the middle of track one. Those are the images I saw while listening to this. Then the song came to a halt and turned into something else. This music is very much soundtrack music to me, but not in a negative way. It is interesting. It belongs. It’s not something I would choose to listen to or put on, but it certainly captures your interest and attention while you hear it. That ambient sound on track 2 is something I enjoy in smaller doses. Not sure if this too much of it. Weird album. Sometimes the style isn’t my favorite. But it’s all something unique alright. Not sure how to rate. Randomly mind blowing while also being too much at times. Definitely gave me sci fi movie vibes. I’ll go with a 3.

Pleasantly surprised Tangerine Dream made the cut, and Phaedra is easily their most definitive sound and era. As a synthesizer player I am contractually obligated to give this masterpiece in synthesizer-jamming music a 5/5.

I finally figured out (not that I had been devoted to this change as i've really only half-assed that trying) how to listen to the music via headphones. I have been missing out and probably given short-shrift to all the albums previous to this. Listening via headphones can help in focusing in on the one activity: listening. Hearing, thinking about, experiencing just the one thing: the music. From this point on, I am only going to listen via head phones and not get distracted (at least aurally) by the 1000 and 1 different things that can draw me away from the task at hand: listening to the music. (Closing the eyes really helps, too.) So, this was probably a good choice for this music, because otherwise my phone amongst other things/events/distractions could have drawn me away from the task at hand. Just listening to this album allowed me to hear and only hear what I was doing (eyes closed of course). I get it. This album is great for that. Otherwise, I would have been hearing the email ding (a friend I once was very close to is making a movie and he has been texting me about his endeavor: writing, scrounging up money, enlisting actors, etc. I definitely would have stopped listening to respond to his texts.... Honestly, this is a great album in which to devote your time. It is aurally very interesting in and of itself. I think I might have given it less attention since it's really a mind-wandering/meandering prompt. But when you're only listening and not simultaneously checking on baseball scores, it's quite interesting and worthy of the time spent to just listen. 4 "concentrated" stars. (I hope this makes sense and my (mis)spelling/mind-wandering is at least somewhat sensible.)

I'm sure it was groundbreaking at the time, and kudos for that, but being technically groundbreaking doesn't make it an engaging listen to me. I could see it making a good soundtrack to an art house movie, or some sort on plants or space.

Long mystical good background ambient music

Pre-techno ambient vibe

Yet another trip to the planetarium that I did not ask for.

Electronic space music for meditation in every dystopian movie.

Cooler than I expected, I’m not that into electric music, but this was sort of fun

Pretty cool. Would have NEVER guessed this was recorded in the 70s. I see why it's on this list.

walked my dog while listening, first track had me feeling like i getting chased my alien or sum sci-fi shi. ambient music is cool but its not rly my thing. i enjoy reading about it more than i like listening to it. not at all bad but i know it won't much of an impact on me

Pretentious and boring at the same time.

Didn’t hate it, but that’s the best praise that I can give to this.

Churchy and boring.

wow, what a RIDE!!! Three discs??? No words?? LFG

Oh, fuck no.

While I was listening to this, my wife popped around the corner and said, "what the hell are you listening to?" I enjoyed the vaguely ominous soundscape and the opportunity to finally listen to this band for the first time.

Music to get stoned and watch old music videos with the sound off by? I don't dislike it as much as a 2 might suggest but I am starting to tire of the presence of so many ambient/whatever albums on this list.

4/5 - I have nothing insightful to say other than this is excellent music to work to. I'll definitely listen to more Tangerine Dream when I need to get in the zone.

There’s a white noise app for aliens that plays this to help them sleep. Atmospheric, structured, and not too repetitive. Certainly not something I’ll be reaching for again, but it gave me a pleasant but uncanny feeling while working at the office.

No standouts

Not a fan

Spa music. Not unpleasant… but has no role on this list. Giving it one star not because I don’t like it, but there is nothing unique about it. Background music to a massage in my opinion.

I swear the trick to these electronic, atmospheric albums is to pretend it’s a score to a show, movie, or video game (usually the answer is Tron), and you will instantly like it more. My real time thought about 5 minutes in was “wow, this would have been an excellent song for Stranger Things.” Cut to me spending the rest of the album length learning that the Stranger Things composers were heavily influenced by Tangerine Dream and used at least one song by them on the show. And then they were so impressed with the show that Tangerine Dream made a cover of the Stranger Things theme song (which is incredible, please check it out). Did I like the album or do I just miss Stranger Things? I’ll never know. But listening to this album led me to a richer understanding of one of my favorite shows, and I genuinely had a good time with this. For that, I am grateful.