When TD’s first album, Electronic Meditation, was recorded, there was virtually no electronic music equipment available at all. How did the group manage to create the sounds?
The recording process was rather exotic and had very little to do with the actual generation of electronic sounds. Sounds were made by using everyday objects, such as a sieve filled with dried peas, an old office calculator, 2 old iron bars and parchment paper. These were recorded with a microphone and then run through reverbs and delays to create unusual sounds. The results were not always very tonal and miles apart from a commercial pop sound. Furthermore, the studio equipment they had at their disposal was by best means very sparse. As they did not have a lot of money, everything was recorded directly onto a Revox 1/4″ tape machine. It was rather rough and adventurous and the band would have hardly dreamed that anyone would have liked to release this album. But… fortunately, history proved them wrong
As a teenage computer geek in the mid 80’s I was obviously fascinated with the electronic music scene as well. From my point of view, synthesizers were every bit as cool as electric guitars. I had a friend at school who played the flute and introduced me to some of the synth artists of the time. Tangerine Dream, Wendy Carlos, Jarre and Vangelis had already been around for some time and their albums were relatively easy to find in local record shops.
Last summer, I scavenged a couple of “Neue Heimat” series of new electronic music collection CDs from Berlin and I’ve been listening to them every now and then. Today I decided to find out if Tangerine Dream is still around and spent some time reading about their history. I suddenly realized that this type of music and creative energy has been around in Germany for decades and the modern electronic music scene is, in a sense, really a continuation of the same german underground love affair with electronic instruments.
Posted by api in Audiovisual instinct, Blast from the past