Although this is an official Tangerine Dream release, the music you hear on "Bootleg Box Set" originated from a non-profit CD-R trade project called "Tangerine Tree" which I started about two years ago. Back then I never ever thought that these recordings would be released officially and listened to by maybe a few thousand TD fans (the first volume of the Tangerine Tree -consisting of 10 cdr's, incl. the B-Box concerts of Sheffield 74, Croydon 75, Bilbao 76 & Berlin 76 - were distributed to maybe only 250 members of the Tangerine Dream mailing list at Yahoogroups worldwide) It was just an attempt to distribute great unreleased TD recordings in the best possible sound quality.

The original Bootleg Box Set recordings were for the most part remastered audience recordings (hence the word 'bootleg', since taping and distributing such releases is not legal...but our project got tolerated by Tangerine Dream, and Edgar Froese received his 'Tree' sets for free...of course ;-)

Regarding the sound quality of these shows: except maybe for Berlin 1976 (which would have sounded better if I had used Dolby B while converting the music from tape onto CDR) the sound quality is as good as it possibly can get. Sheffield 74, Berlin 76 & Bilbao 76 are all master tape copies, Croydon 75 is from the master tape, and London 75 is a direct transfer straight from the original BBC master recording.

I was told that a 2nd Bootleg Box is also in the pipeline (don't know the release date though), but here you will find more recordings from 1976-1983 which will have an even better sound quality (most likely Nottingham 76, Washington 77 FM, Hamburg 78, Newcastle 81, and Frankfurt 83)

Yes!

I was a frequent "post-er" on the T.Dream web-site bulletin board,and one BIG debate was why this type of release was never made by the group. The debate got so hot that the band(Tangerine Dream)shut down the BBS!! Probably because of a few comments the band found insulting...like that they were fools not to "beat the boots" and make the money that the black market was making on this music. We fans are obviously rabid for classic T.D!

Now ,you casual buyers can easily pick-up a set of this magical ,fantasy synth music that doesn't always lull you ,but just might scare you into other realms of sound(not unlike early Pink Floyd)...and you don't even have to offend the band to get it(Or beg the "T.D.Tree" for Cd-Rs)! We did the work for you!

These early examples of experimental rock(NOT "New Age")are finally here at your fingertips! All the analog synth sounds, cool old organ and mellotron,plus some searing guitar work is here too. Now you can re-live those days when people went to see Tangerine Dream for an experience of the freaky,cosmic kind...and each night's performance was different too! Yeah,there were sequencers ,but cromagnon things they were...unruly monsters of technology that spewed-out weird cheesily,futuristic sounds at the hands of these German mad-men!The sheer unstability of these things added an organic ,edge-of-the-seat quality to this band's nightly excursions! This was one band that could take you to outer space,or into the bowels of hell,but getting there,ahhh.....

If you like music that pushes your imagination into new places,this is for you! Then again,if you haven't heard a Tangerine Dream release that you liked since 1978,just thank us "griping cranks" and just scoop one of these sets up before the thing is deleted! Just put on your head-phones and fly!

A couple of years ago Tangerine Dream teased us with the release of "Soundmill Navigator", a 1976 live album, supposedly setting the stage for a stream of "classic" TD live releases. And then... nothing happened, until now! Here comes "The Bootleg Box Set Vol. 1", a 5 concerts, 7 CD extravaganza containing about 6 hrs of live music covering 1974-1976, with the classic line-up of Egdar Froese, Chris Franke and Peter Baumann.

The Sheffield concert (audio recording; 10-29-74; 44 min.) is a Phaedra-era stream of conciousness, not much melody to speak of. The Royal Albert Hall concert (soundboard, 4-2-75; 103 min.) is the highlight of the box, shifting easily from mood pieces to sequencer-driven hard-charging sets, reminiscent of the Rubycon studio album of the same era (and the band is introduced by John Peel, no less!). The Croydon concert (audio; 10-22-75; 61 min.) contains elements of the Ricochet live album, with again great sequencer-driven tracks. The Bilbao concert (audio; 1-31-76; 111 min.) is in the same vein, but not as focused. The Berlin concert (audio; 6-27-76; 31 min.) is the real puzzler on this set: the same concert as "Soundmill navigator" but hardly sounding the same (the sound quality doesn't help), begging the question: why is this included here?

In the end, these are minor quibbles. This set is an excellent addition to the Tangerine Dream catalogue of their "classic era" music. I've been waiting for years for a collection like this, and recommend it strongly to any TD fan of the Phaedra-Rubycon-Ricochet era.

I'll start by saying I would have paid much more then the 50 dollars I spent on this. I'll also say that I'm a big fan of the early works (Rubycon,Phaedra, Ricochet). So when I heard this was similar to those CD's, I had to get it.

Simply put, this box set is the Tangs doing what they do, and that's a good thing. I think they didn't spend enough time exploring this avant garde style. The sequencer driven trance most notably heard in Ricochet. I've collected most of their early works (with the exception of Green Desert), and I was left wanting more. I love this sound; it's unlike anything before or after. Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining, I can listen to the same songs over and over again and not get tired. It's just that I wanted more to explore. And that's where this boxed set came in.

This boxed set is all the early albums rolled into one, and that's a good thing. I can hear variations on many themes from Rubycon, Atem and few I've never heard before. Listening to this is like meeting an old friend again after many years. It's comfortably familiar, but somehow very different. I'm listening to Bilbao(Part 1) as I'm writing this and can't help but think it's very similar to Ricochet, and that's a good thing.

One thing I would recommend is to listen to this with a good sound system. I was listening to this in my car (I have one of those cars that you can hear from far away = Mono Amp and good sub) and heard allot of detail in the low end (40-100Hz) that most speakers might pass. Especially if you listen to it with computer speakers, like I'm doing now. What I'm saying is to get the total experience, make sure you have a few subs running; it gives the music a new dimension.

If you're reading this, that probably means you know who Tangerine Dream are and what they do. Most people I know don't even know who the Tangs are. I think they are legends who will never get their proper credit.

Like I said, this box set is them doing what they do best. Most people probably don't make their way to this page. They stick with music like Britney or J Lo or some other form of pop music you find on MTV. So if you're reading this, it's likely you know who the Tangs are and the kind of music they make. This is more of the same from the early years.

Best of all, when encoded at 256kbps, this entire boxed set will fit on a single MP3 CD, and that's a good thing.

The genesis of this set is actually a CD-R tree conducted by the tadream group on Yahoo. TD didn't have the time to put such a set together, and the master tapes were of dubious quality, so they took the masters from the CD-R tree and released it as a boxed set. What I find really amusing is the appearance on the cover of the "Trademark of Quality" logo. TMOQ was one of the biggest bootleg producers of the '70s and '80s and were noted for unique artwork and generally good quality recordings. That said, the actual shows the bootleg box presents aren't TD at their best, when compared to, say, Ricochet or Encore, but this is how they sounded during their '70s heyday. Sometimes they had a great night, sometimes a not-so-great night, but they always produced interesting music that would never be produced again. (Since it was all improvised) As a document of that era, the Bootleg Box is incomparable. As listenable music, well, you have to be a devotee of that era of TD to love every minute of it, but this is the only way, outside of fan tapes and actual bootlegs, that you'll get to hear the real TD.