''Phaedra'' is the fifth major release and fifth studio album by German
electronic music
Electronic music is a genre of music that employs electronic musical instruments, digital instruments, or circuitry-based music technology in its creation. It includes both music made using electronic and electromechanical means ( electroac ...
group
Tangerine Dream. It was recorded during November 1973 at
The Manor in
Shipton-on-Cherwell
Shipton-on-Cherwell is a village on the River Cherwell about north of Kidlington in Oxfordshire, England. The village is part of the civil parish of Shipton-on-Cherwell and Thrupp.
Manor
The earliest known record of Shipton-on-Cherwell is fr ...
, England and released on 20 February 1974 through
Virgin Records
Virgin Records is a record label owned by Universal Music Group. It originally founded as a British independent record label in 1972 by entrepreneurs Richard Branson, Simon Draper, Nik Powell, and musician Tom Newman. It grew to be a worldwid ...
. This is the first Tangerine Dream album to feature their now classic
sequencer
Sequencer may refer to:
Technology
* Drum sequencer (controller), an electromechanical system for controlling a sequence of events automatically
* DNA sequencer, a machine used to automatically produce a sequence readout from a biological DNA sam ...
-driven sound, which is considered to have greatly influenced the
Berlin School genre.
The album marked the beginning of the group's international success and was their first album released on the Virgin label. It achieved six-figure sales in the UK, reaching number 15 in the
UK Albums Chart
The Official Albums Chart is a list of albums ranked by physical and digital sales and (from March 2015) audio streaming in the United Kingdom. It was published for the first time on 22 July 1956 and is compiled every week by the Official Charts C ...
in a 15-week run,
with virtually no airplay, only by strong word of mouth. It also earned the group a
gold disc in seven countries,
though in their native Germany it sold barely 6,000 units.
The album title refers to
Phaedra
Phaedra may refer to:
Mythology
* Phaedra (mythology), Cretan princess, daughter of Minos and Pasiphaë, wife of Theseus
Arts and entertainment
* ''Phaedra'' (Alexandre Cabanel), an 1880 painting
Film
* ''Phaedra'' (film), a 1962 film by ...
of
Greek mythology
A major branch of classical mythology, Greek mythology is the body of myths originally told by the Ancient Greece, ancient Greeks, and a genre of Ancient Greek folklore. These stories concern the Cosmogony, origin and Cosmology#Metaphysical co ...
.
Background and recording
On hearing a set of recordings
Edgar Froese
Edgar Willmar Froese (; 6 June 1944 – 20 January 2015) was a German musical artist and electronic music pioneer, best known for founding the electronic music group Tangerine Dream in 1967. Froese was the only continuous member of the group ...
and
Christopher Franke
Christopher Franke (born 6 April 1953) is a German musician and composer. From 1971 to 1987, he was a member of the electronic group Tangerine Dream. Initially a drummer with The Agitation, later renamed Agitation Free, his primary focus eventua ...
had made earlier in the year at Skyline Studios in
Berlin
Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...
,
Virgin Records
Virgin Records is a record label owned by Universal Music Group. It originally founded as a British independent record label in 1972 by entrepreneurs Richard Branson, Simon Draper, Nik Powell, and musician Tom Newman. It grew to be a worldwid ...
'
Richard Branson
Sir Richard Charles Nicholas Branson (born 18 July 1950) is a British billionaire, entrepreneur, and business magnate. In the 1970s he founded the Virgin Group, which today controls more than 400 companies in various fields.
Branson expressed ...
offered the group a five-year contract and was keen for them to record in the UK. A modular
Moog synthesizer
The Moog synthesizer is a modular synthesizer developed by the American engineer Robert Moog. Moog debuted it in 1964, and Moog's company R. A. Moog Co. (later known as Moog Music) produced numerous models from 1965 to 1981, and again from 20 ...
was bought with the advance and the trio arrived at
The Manor, in
Shipton-on-Cherwell
Shipton-on-Cherwell is a village on the River Cherwell about north of Kidlington in Oxfordshire, England. The village is part of the civil parish of Shipton-on-Cherwell and Thrupp.
Manor
The earliest known record of Shipton-on-Cherwell is fr ...
, Oxfordshire in the winter of 1973.
The entire album was recorded in less than six weeks, with the first recording session taking place on 20 November 1973. Some of the music was recorded with the help of Froese's wife, Monique. Interviewed by Mark J. Prendergast, Froese recalled:
''Phaedra'' was the first album in which many things had to be structured. The reason was that we were using the Moog sequencer (all driving bass notes) for the first time. Just tuning the instrument took several hours each day, because at the time there were no pre-sets or memory banks. We worked each day from 11 o'clock in the morning to 2 o'clock at night. By the 11th day we barely had 6 minutes of music on tape. Technically everything that could go wrong did go wrong. The tape machine broke down, there were repeated mixing console failures and the speakers were damaged because of the unusually low frequencies of the bass notes. After 12 days of this we were completely knackered. Fortunately, after a two-day break in the countryside a new start brought a breakthrough. "Mysterious Semblance" was recorded on Dec 4th. Pete and Chris were asleep after a long day's recording session so I invited my wife, Monique, into the studio. I called in the studio engineer and recorded it in one take on a double-keyboarded Mellotron
The Mellotron is an electro-mechanical musical instrument developed in Birmingham, England, in 1963. It is played by pressing its keys, each of which pushes a length of magnetic tape against a capstan, which pulls it across a playback head. A ...
while Monique turned the knobs on a phasing device. This piece is on the record exactly as it was recorded that day. And this practice was to continue for the rest of the session.[
]
Content
The title track was originally based on an
improvisation
Improvisation is the activity of making or doing something not planned beforehand, using whatever can be found. Improvisation in the performing arts is a very spontaneous performance without specific or scripted preparation. The skills of impr ...
recorded in the studio, and unintentionally exhibits one of the limitations of the analog equipment used at the time. As the equipment warmed up, some of the
oscillators
Oscillation is the repetitive or periodic variation, typically in time, of some measure about a central value (often a point of equilibrium) or between two or more different states. Familiar examples of oscillation include a swinging pendulum ...
began to detune (they were highly temperature-sensitive), which was responsible for some of the changes in the music towards the end of the piece.
Both the title track and "Movements of a Visionary" rely on Franke's use of the
Moog analog sequencer as a substitute for
bass guitar
The bass guitar, electric bass or simply bass (), is the lowest-pitched member of the string family. It is a plucked string instrument similar in appearance and construction to an electric or an acoustic guitar, but with a longer neck and ...
. "Mysterious Semblance at the Strand of Nightmares" features Froese soloing on a Mellotron which is treated to slowly sweeping filter effects. "Sequent C'" is a short piece by
Peter Baumann
Peter Baumann (born 29 January 1953) is a German musician. He formed the core line-up of the pioneering German electronic group Tangerine Dream with Edgar Froese and Christopher Franke in 1971. Baumann composed his first solo album in 1976, whi ...
on recorder, with tape echo.
The sleeve design and cover painting are by Froese.
Style and reception
The ''All Music Guide to Electronica'' describes the album as a milestone for the band as "one of the most important, artistic, and exciting works in the history of
electronic music
Electronic music is a genre of music that employs electronic musical instruments, digital instruments, or circuitry-based music technology in its creation. It includes both music made using electronic and electromechanical means ( electroac ...
". ''Phaedra'' is commonly cited as one of
Tangerine Dream's best albums and is listed in ''
1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die
''1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die'' is a musical reference book first published in 2005 by Universe Publishing. Part of the ''1001 Before You Die'' series, it compiles writings and information on albums chosen by a panel of music critics ...
''. In the ''
Q'' and ''Mojo'' Classic Special Edition ''Pink Floyd & The Story of Prog Rock'', the album also came in at 38 in its list of "40 Cosmic Rock Albums".
Writing in his 2000 ''Ambient Century'', Mark J. Prendergast describes the title track: "At over 17 minutes it conveyed feelings of the cosmos, of giant suns exploding, of huge ocean movements, of mythological lands, of eddies and drifts. Layer upon layer of futuristic sounds piled one on top of the other until the whole thing climaxes in some interstellar void."
[
]
In popular culture
The title track and "Mysterious Semblance at the Strand of Nightmares" are both featured in the 2018 interactive Netflix
Netflix, Inc. is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service and production company based in Los Gatos, California. Founded in 1997 by Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph in Scotts Valley, California, it offers a fil ...
film '' Black Mirror: Bandersnatch''. The protagonist Stefan receives a list of music recommendations, featuring such artists as Edgar Froese, Tangerine Dream, Bauhaus
The Staatliches Bauhaus (), commonly known as the Bauhaus (), was a German art school operational from 1919 to 1933 that combined crafts and the fine arts.Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 4th edn., 200 ...
and The Cure
The Cure are an English Rock music, rock band formed in 1978 in Crawley, Crawley, West Sussex. Throughout numerous lineup changes since the band's formation, guitarist, lead vocalist, and songwriter Robert Smith (musician), Robert Smith has re ...
. After thumbing through the records in the record shop, Stefan has to decide between two albums: Tangerine Dream's ''Phaedra'' and Isao Tomita
, often known simply as Tomita, was a Japanese composer, regarded as one of the pioneers of electronic music and space music, and as one of the most famous producers of analog synthesizer arrangements. In addition to creating note-by-note rea ...
's ''The Bermuda Triangle''.
Track listing
A New CD version was issued in 2019 re-mastered from the original master tapes. It contained the extra bonus tracks "Phaedra" and "Sequent C'", both being stereo remixes by Steven Wilson.
Personnel
Musicians
* Edgar Froese
Edgar Willmar Froese (; 6 June 1944 – 20 January 2015) was a German musical artist and electronic music pioneer, best known for founding the electronic music group Tangerine Dream in 1967. Froese was the only continuous member of the group ...
– mellotron
The Mellotron is an electro-mechanical musical instrument developed in Birmingham, England, in 1963. It is played by pressing its keys, each of which pushes a length of magnetic tape against a capstan, which pulls it across a playback head. A ...
, guitar
The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that typically has six strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming or plucking the strings with the dominant hand, while simultaneously pressing selected stri ...
, bass
Bass or Basses may refer to:
Fish
* Bass (fish), various saltwater and freshwater species
Music
* Bass (sound), describing low-frequency sound or one of several instruments in the bass range:
** Bass (instrument), including:
** Acoustic bass gui ...
, VCS 3 synthesizer, organ
Organ may refer to:
Biology
* Organ (biology), a part of an organism
Musical instruments
* Organ (music), a family of keyboard musical instruments characterized by sustained tone
** Electronic organ, an electronic keyboard instrument
** Hammond ...
, cover painting
* Christopher Franke
Christopher Franke (born 6 April 1953) is a German musician and composer. From 1971 to 1987, he was a member of the electronic group Tangerine Dream. Initially a drummer with The Agitation, later renamed Agitation Free, his primary focus eventua ...
– moog synthesizer
The Moog synthesizer is a modular synthesizer developed by the American engineer Robert Moog. Moog debuted it in 1964, and Moog's company R. A. Moog Co. (later known as Moog Music) produced numerous models from 1965 to 1981, and again from 20 ...
, VCS 3 synthesizer
* Peter Baumann
Peter Baumann (born 29 January 1953) is a German musician. He formed the core line-up of the pioneering German electronic group Tangerine Dream with Edgar Froese and Christopher Franke in 1971. Baumann composed his first solo album in 1976, whi ...
– organ, electric piano
An electric piano is a musical instrument which produces sounds when a performer presses the keys of a piano-style musical keyboard. Pressing keys causes mechanical hammers to strike metal strings, metal reeds or wire tines, leading to vibrations ...
, VCS 3 synthesizer, recorder
Recorder or The Recorder may refer to:
Newspapers
* ''Indianapolis Recorder'', a weekly newspaper
* ''The Recorder'' (Massachusetts newspaper), a daily newspaper published in Greenfield, Massachusetts, US
* ''The Recorder'' (Port Pirie), a news ...
Technical
* Edgar Froese – producer
Producer or producers may refer to:
Occupations
*Producer (agriculture), a farm operator
*A stakeholder of economic production
*Film producer, supervises the making of films
**Executive producer, contributes to a film's budget and usually does not ...
, cover painting
* Phil Becque – engineer
Engineers, as practitioners of engineering, are professionals who invent, design, analyze, build and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets and materials to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while considering the l ...
Charts
Single
A promotional single was released in 1974, in the U.S, on the Virgin label, with excerpts of two tracks.
References
External links
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Phaedra (Album)
1974 albums
Tangerine Dream albums
Virgin Records albums
Instrumental albums
Space music albums by German artists