The selection of music on this CD is representative of Tangerine Dream's latest studio offerings. The sound quality sparkles as usual...something I expect nothing less of from Tangerine Dream. This live CD comes from their 1997 European tour. I attended the Frankfurt concert and wish Tangerine Dream had included the longer (30 minutes) aural soundscape version of "Towards The Evening Star." It was awesome to hear live. All in all, this CD is an excellent listen and provides newcomers to Tangerine Dream a good introduction to their very unique sound.

This album presents the second half of Tangerine Dream's live concert set from their 1997 European tour. After the opening (untitled) percussion solo intro, the CD presents over an hour of seamlessly segued fast-paced and concentrated synthesiser and percussion tracks of the kind that the band has come to specialise in over the last ten years. Unlike Tangerine Dream's earlier touring habits, all of the material presented during the tour will be familiar to long-term fans. The music featured here consists entirely of tracks from their 90s albums, mostly from "Rockoon" and "Goblins Club" but with additional items from "220 Volt Live", "Tyranny of Beauty", "Turn of the Tides" and "Oasis" thrown in.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the stage line-up of Edgar and Jerome Froese, augmented by guitarist Zlatko Perica and percussionist Emil Hachfeld are clearly more at home with this material than with that of the vintage set contained on the companion album, "Valentine Wheels". This is an altogether more satisfying affair than that release, and indeed, a great improvement on the other two CDs featuring material from this same concert tour, "Dream Encores" and "Ambient Monkeys". (Four albums from one concert tour-is this milking it, or wot? ) Even so, this disc is more likely to appeal to someone who was at one of the 1997 tour concerts who fancies a memento of the occasion, rather than to regular collectors of Tangerine Dream's music of the last decade. Perica's distinctive style of virtuosic guitar-playing adds some new twists to familiar numbers, but there is simply not enough new material here to warrant purchasing if you already have "Rockoon" and "Goblins Club", or even "The Dream Mixes".

If you're new to 90s Dreaming, though, this could be a good place to start, giving a fair overview of the band's last ten years of music making. And if you then like what you hear here, you need to go out and buy "Dream Mixes vol 2: Timesquare", "The Dream Mixes" and "220 Volt live" for more of the same ilk.

Recorded on April 23, 1997, in Zabreze, Poland, for a fan club release, the nine tracks encompass the second half of the European Tour's concert set.

With no mixing or overdubs, the listener is hearing TD as if part of the audience, which is a huge plus. The electronics of Edgar and Jerome Froese are augmented by guitarist Zlatko Perica and Emil Hachfeld on percussion/codotronics.

This is a solid set, with a soundscape that builds to a stunning climax. In a vast catalog of great hits and hideous misses, the live album is tremendous.