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Rating:  -
Another review used the following words to describe other offerings of this genre, but I would use the exact words to describe Tangerine Dream: "unchallenging and mind numbingly repetitive while hiding their lack of talent behind nob twiddling gimmickry."
Rating:  -
Phaedra is a solid entry into a very specific and constant niche. The unchanging feel and sound of the record is both what makes it successful as ambient music and what makes it something I really have to be in the mood to listen to.
All but one of the pieces are quite drawn out. They can be described as dated futurism, holding a sort of romantic, nostalgic feeling for what was then deemed as the cutting edge (even if you weren't alive in the 70's). Despite being electronic, Phaedra is a very emotional set of songs. They have all the best qualities of a dramatic mellotron soundtrack and all the power of the scenes they would correspond with.
As far as instrumentation, Tangerine Dream at this point were making pure synthesizer music. There's an interesting variety of analog sounds and sequences, but the entire album is pretty much one instrument aside from the brief final track "Sequent C'", which is a beautiful reverbed flute. There is no percussion or voice to be found.
Of the 3 long-form compositions, the title track "Phaedra" seems the most thought out and developed, and is also the best at taking you places. It makes its way through rhythmic bubblings, epic sweeps, children playing and Throbbing Gristle-esque repeating ambiences. "Mysterious Semblance at the Strand of Nightmares" has the quality of being multi-interpretable... to one person it might sound tragic, to another triumphant. It's really moody and does basically the same thing for 9:55, so I only feel like listening to it sometimes. "Movements of a Visionary" (a great song name) is similar to the title track in structure and variety, and has a lot of interesting parts and sounds.
To some people this album will seem very boring, but if what I've described sounds appealing, you can't go wrong with Phaedra.
Rating: -
This is some of the best ambient I have ever heard. While most artists that operate under the label "ambient" do so as an excuse to remain unchallenging and mind numbingly repetitive while hiding their lack of talent behind nob twiddling gimmickry , Tangerine Dream amazingly uses this pallet to capture some fascinating textures that evolve in slow motion along with our emotional connections with these organically mechanical songs. Unlike later albums, the mechanical output generated on this disc is superbly balanced out with the organic instrumentation that knows its intuition much better then most of the long, risky, drony type compositions that this band and others have inspired to undertake. This is repetition as art. Not repetition as exercise, or even repetition as awareness, but truly repetition repeated only until it feels repetitive and then instinctively added upon, inducing forward motions of audible thrust in previously undefined ways. Sad that some of the freshest, most innovative stuff that set precedents in ambient form was some of its first.
Rating:  -
gREAT HEARING THIS AGIN AFTER SELLING MY RECORDS YEARS AGO. THESE MEN GAVE US THE DAWN OF NEW AGE MUSIC AND DEVELOPED A NEW TYPE OF MUSIC WITH THREE KEYBOARD PLAYERS ONLY. UNIQUE AND SATISFYING
Rating: -
Although Tangerine Dream had already carved out a nitche for themselves releasing four albums on the German Ohr label, it was "Phaedra", the band's fifth album and debut on Virgin Records, that catipulted the band to 'superstar' status so-to-speak. When the album was released in early 1974, "Phaedra" showed an amazing feat of making the UK top 10 with virtually no airplay or heavy promotion. Its success was purely due to word-of-mouth. 30 years later, "Phaedra" is regarded as a blueprint for techno, trance and ambient music and still sounds fresh and vibrant today.
Upon signing with Virgin, the Tangerine Dream band members (Edgar Froese, Christopher Franke and Peter Baumann) were given a large financial advance which allowed them to purchase the very latest technology on the market. Franke purchased a Moog synthesizer which became the primary vehicle for this album alongside Froese's Mellotron. The new equipment as well as a fresh new musical perpective made for what is undoubtely a landmark album.
The album opens with its 17-minute title track which begins with a long choir-like drone from the Mellotron accompanied by strange space sounds. From this, a Moog sequencer pulse emerges which sets the pace for the first half of the piece with its hypnotic shifting rhythms. As the rhythmic section reaches its climax, the piece shifts into an otherworldly collage with a droning organ and haunting Mellotron strings and choirs. After the main piece fades out, there is a brief coda of a recording of children playing in a playground.
The second half the album is taken up by three shorter pieces. The first is the nearly 10-minute "Mysterious Semblance At The Strand Of Nightmares". Despite its rather spooky title, this piece is actually a calm atmospheric piece by Edgar Froese performed on the Mellotron along with some embellishments from the VCS3 synthesizer. The mood of this piece definitely creates images of watching an ocean on a clear quiet night.
The next track, "Movements Of A Visionary" begins with what sounds like whispering voices in an echo chamber before giving way to Franke's frentic Moog pulse rhythm. Both Froese and Baumann embellish Franke's sequencer with long held organ phrases and subtle electric piano textures.
The album's closer "Sequent C" is a brief 2-minute coda by Peter Baumann which was either performed by a heavily echoed flute or a keyboard that sounds like one. The echoed and arpeggiated phrases aren't too different from that which is heard on the very early Kraftwerk albums (pre-Autobahn).
This album was only the beginning of Tangerine Dream's very successful run in the 1970's. The next several releases would also become groundbreaking classics which would lead to the band's first U.S. tour and first foray into film scoring. "Phaedra" was the beginning of TD's spot in the limelight and displays just how ahead of their time they were at this early phase.
This album is highly recommended not only for electronic music fans but also for those studying the genre's history. This is album that can be listened to and studied time and again and still have new elements be heard in it.
A Definitive Pioneering Opus!!
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