Tangerine Dream

They smacked the sixties rock. With the help of synthesizers, the Berlin Leviathans revolutionized music, proudly displaying sounds hitherto unknown. They even caused a lot of bands and critics to bug: it seems that this is how you change the world.

West Berlin, 1971. On the western side of the Wall, young contemporary people decide to break the codes of a rock that goes around in circles. Shocking and confusing as it may be, Tangerine Dream then takes an unknown planet by storm, like Neil Armstrong treading the lunar craters for the first time. Welcome in weightlessness, where synthesizers respond to the more classical instruments, worn down to the string by the sixties bands.

Minimalist pieces, hovering sounds. With the late Edgar Froese at the controls, the German band revolutionised the world, launching, a few months before their compatriots Kraftwerk, a daring turn towards the as yet unexplored lands of electronic music. They are the future. They imagine it, as a subtle terrain of expression, and shape it with an axe. Because yes, it can't be invented: Edgar Froese, before making music, was a sculptor. Moreover, believe it or not, it was even Salvator Dali who led him, through his surrealist paintings, to assume an avant-gardism long misunderstood by critics.

But no matter what other people say, time has done its work. And if being the first to arrive in virgin lands makes you a pioneer, it is also your responsibility to face the metaphorical bullets, the defenders of traditional rock. Inventing is disobedience, but you still have to resist the weight of mentalities that evolve differently. This is what Tangerine Dream, choosing freedom over convention, originality over ease, has managed to do. This group, with more than a hundred albums on the counter, has indeed changed things, and God knows how much today's young bands, under their fringe of progressive rock and electronic music, owe them a lot.