After Froese and Schulze parted company in 1970, the band was lucky to find a replacement in Christopher Franke, an extremely talented musician, who will be one of the first people on earth to explore the power of synthesizers and translate technology into musical notes. From 1970 Franke and Froese will constitute a nucleus of the Tangerine Dream band, accompanied by more or less important temporary members. Unfortunately, after 18 years, their cooperation ended abruptly, with no particular benefit for what remained of Tangerine Dream.

Alpha Centauri, their second album, is a significant step forward in their career. The first change one notices immediately after turning the album on, is the quality of the sound. Unlike its predecessor, this album was not recorded in an old factory warehouse, but in a studio. Guitar is not a dominant sound anymore - it is messed into the musical texture that in turn consists of landscapes created by VCS3 synthesizer performed by Franke and "church-like" organs maneuvered by both Froese and Schroyder, the latter having a very temporary adventure with Tangerine Dream. Still, there is lots of experimental stuff in this recording. One does not have to look far - the whole "side B" of vinyl consists of a single, title track that does not possess a musical leading line. It is hard to digest only at the first trial or for "unaccustomed ears". Do not give up, however. Come back to Alpha Centauri every now and then and maybe, as I certainly hope, you will find a fly in a collision with Comas Sola somewhat attractive, even if pure historical reasons are not convincing for you at this time.

The second track is the most structured, which seems to be against their hitherto worshipped motto of complete freedom. Under heavy stratum of organs, we can dig the buried neoromantic tune - trying to catch it is by itself a pastime. Then they slowly progress with pompous symphonic schwung that culminates in hysteric looping of the tune and organs and blasted altogether with acoustic percussion solo by Christopher Franke. The whole album ends with German recitative. I love this language, although I understand as much as from Eskimo.

SUMMARY: buy if you like to experiment or if you are more and more into Tangerine Dream.

The TD line-up at the time of "Alpha Centauri" was Edgar Froese, Christoph Franke (his first appearance) and Steve Schroyder (his last), with guest performers Udo Dennebourg (flute and voice) and Roland Paulyck (synthesiser). This remastered release on CD provides a whole new perspective on music that is as refreshing today as the day it was released, with nuances of the original now rescued from the obscurity of the muddy old black vinyl pressing.

If you're unfamiliar with Tangerine Dream's early "Kosmische Musik" period, then this disc may come as something as a shock. It is, however, a good place to start an exploration of their early music. It contains an excellent cross-section of the styles of playing which characterised TD's early years, having meditative pieces with long drawn out organ chords over gurgling VCS3 oscillators, flighty flute lines woven through Christoph Franke's jazzy, often improvised drumming and, of course, a general other- or out-of-this-worldliness pervading everything. 'Sunrise in the Third System' is a short (4 mins) opener, which sets the scene for the music to follow. 'Fly and Collision of Comas Sola' is a longer (13 mins) epic, with more soaring, cosmic synthesiser sounds and organ chords over Froese's guitar strummings eventually being drowned out by a veritable battle between guest flautist, Udo Dennebourg, and Franke's increasingly frantic drumming--a true masterpiece! The main work on the disc is the 22 minute title-track, featuring some fascinating dialogue between flute, electric guitar, organ, various warbling electronic devices (mostly spacey-type VCS3 settings but also including such non-musical sources as coffee machine) and finally human voice, in the form of wordless chant and (heavily processed) dialogue! This is an exquisite precursor to the follow-up album, "Zeit".

As I mentioned earlier, this release has been remastered, allegedly from the original master tapes in TD's own Eastgate Studios. Be warned, however, that these tapes sound to be in a pretty dire state and one of the problems inherent in such remasterings is that as well as some details of the music being clearer, many of the defects become more exposed too! The opening moments of the disc, for example, have some appalling amplifier hum laid bare for all to hear and there are other moments throughout the disc when the original tapes sound to have saturated quite badly. That said, the sheer brilliance of this music soon drives such technical shortcomings from mind. (It helps to play the disc at a quieter level than normal too.)

Personally, I would have liked some longer silences between the tracks, too: all we get are a couple of seconds--just not enough between tracks of this intensity! I was disappointed too that half of the original record sleeve art-work as well as the original sleeve-notes, such as they were, have not made it into this production, either. All in all, then, I feel that there are sufficient niggles for me to dock an entire star from my rating of this disc. Bear in mind, too, that in common with most records of this vintage, this disc contains rather less than 40 minutes of music. I personally don't think that should put you off, of course, so go on, treat yourself!

(See also my other review of this disc on the amazon.co.uk site.)

With Electronic Meditation, Tangerine Dream blew people's minds by intense guitar and drum jamming, making them easily categorized as a rock band. Then Klaus Schulze and Conrad Schnitzler abruptly left, replaced by Steve Schroyder (later briefly of Ash Ra Tempel) and a teenaged Chris Franke. With Alpha Centauri, the band abandoned most of the rock found on their previous album in place of deep space explorations. And you know you'll get something spacy when songs bears titles like "Sunrise in the Third System" and "Fly and Collision of Coma Solas". Most of rock's convention's are abandoned here with the sound of what sounds like a pipe organ and lots of spacy electronic effects. The only drums you'll find is near the end of "Fly & Collision" and that's as close to rock as you'll get here. The album then ends with the side length title track which is truly the ultime excurion in to deep space. I just love this stuff and I wonder why so many people these days listen to Jewel. For me, I feel Tangerine Dream's early material from the Ohr label (1970-1973) represents the band at their most interesting, even though it's not for everyone, like Alpha Centauri. Certainly if you're expecting some of their later, more upbeat electronic albums, you probably won't like this, but if you love unconventional space music like me, you're sure to like this.

Beautiful find! Pieces of this album have been floating on various compilations since the late 80's, but the album itself is much older. Ranking up with "Phaedra" and "Zeit" in intensity and haunting athmosphere, this 1971 album was one of the first "space music" records ever produced. It is also a good example of early Tangerine Dream work, before Edgar Froese took complete control of the band.

Produced two years before Mike Oldfield's "Tubular Bells" and Pink Floyd's "Dark Side Of The Moon", "Alpha Centauri" is a very dense album, with many synthesizer tonalities bordering on the psychedelic. Kraftwerk was doing approximately the same thing on their first two albums. Tangerine Dream was experimenting electronic minimalism, and the three tracks of the record are the first sign they were on the right path. "Alpha Centauri" has a very precise idea of what dreams should sound like - "Sunrise in the Third System" sketches a hallucinating landscape, further detailed in "Fly and Collision of Comas Sola" (a rather corny name by today's standards), then destroyed and re-created in "Alpha Centauri". The tracks skillfuly increase their duration, but in the end the listener is left with a lingering feeling that the album deserved to be longer than 40 minutes.

In their early years (1969-1973) Tangerine Dream never failed to produce works that were COMPLETELY WEIRD, while at the same time sounding totally awesome. Take the title track on this CD, for instance. Lots and lots of organ and pastoral flute, with the occaisonal synthesizer wash, and right when you're about to fall asleep, this voice comes in and a choir ends the work! Where'd they get that!?
Or take the track "Fly and Collision of Comas Sola" (fabulously cool title!). This is my 2nd favorite TD piece ever, next to Phaedra. The piece sounds like another drawn-out kosmische space track, but then at around 9:00 some drums start to creep up through the mix. At 10:38 they blast out over everything else with all the fury of a King Crimson jam.
I would recommend this disc to anyone who is familiar with TD's later, mid-70s work so they can hear the "other side" of the band. Or anyone who likes really spacey, ground-breaking stuff. Or anyone who likes really heavy organ pieces. A very good 2nd effort from an innovative band.