Tangerine Dream courtesy Fmly Agency
Band names are a strange necessity of organization that can lead musicians in unexpected directions. How does any band aptly summarize its sound in just a word or two or three? If the music is a mix of psychedelic, krautrock and electronica designed to evoke cinematic visions, a name like Tangerine Dream surely fits.
Formed in the late 1960s, Tangerine Dream has consistently chased the promise of technology in the detail of musical composition, and that has not only put them at the forefront.of most genres, it’s catapulted them into a genre of their own. This focus on electronic competency and the band’s music, mainly being free of vocals, gave hem opportunities to score movies such as “Legend,” “Near Dark,” “Risky Business,” “Firestarter” and “Street Hawk,” making the group a staple in 1980s movie scores.
The group has had a near-constant revolving door of musicians, with Edgar Froese being the lone original member until he died in 2015. However, the group has continued toiling under the tutelage of Froese’s chosen successor and bandmate since 2005, Thorsten Quaeschning. Quaeschning is joined by violinist Hoshiko Yamane and electronic musician Ulrich Schnauss who have been making new music since 2017’s “Quantum Gate” and released “Raum” in February of 2022. The band has been performing these songs live on their “From Virgin to Quantum Years 2022” tour and do not appear — despite having just celebrated 50 years as a band — to be slowing the pace.
Tangerine Dream is more a hive mind than a band. Lineups come and go, but when the music being made is the apotheosis of a specific type of sound, well, your group just becomes a noun (and lately a reference to the very Tangerine-tinted theme music for Netflix’s “Stranger Things.”) That’s a feat no band can guarantee at the outset; only the best at executing their vision over time become a genre or subgenre unto themselves. Tangerine Dream, in name and sound, inhabit our dreams as the score to video gaming, film and television embedded in our collective psyche.
Arrive on time… Night Foundation will be the opener! The human being behind the curtain, Dick Vergez, tells PureHoney: “One of the biggest inspirations initially behind my project Night Foundation is the Kosmische musik of Tangerine Dream, so to be opening for them is well… a dream! I will be joined by the legendary Little Annie for a track or two at the tail end of the live set.
Tangerine Dream play with Night Foundation at the Miami Beach Bandshell, 8pm Friday, September 8. tangerinedreammusic.com
