Over a period of ever-shifting lineups, Edgar Froese has remained the stalwart mastermind of Tangerine Dream — always pushing the envelope, always searching for that next sound. The latest ones come from deep, deep space — and an unlikely collaboration with Queen’s Brian May.
Froese, of course, founded Tangerine Dream in 1967, during period when the electronic music this German group has become known for was in its infancy. Along the way, he has worked closely with Christopher Franke, Peter Baumann and Johannes Schmoelling, though today’s edition of the band has seen each of them depart in favor of key collaborative figures like Thorsten Quaeschning and Hoshiko Yamane.
Along the way, Tangerine Dream has served as a pioneering voice in the development of psychedelia and Krautrock, of electronic music’s Berlin School, of New Age and then of electronica.
Froese, in an exclusive SER Sitdown, talks harnessing the actual sounds of stars in order to create new songs, about working with May, his life-long goal of never fitting in any peg — be it round or square — and how technology continues to drive Tangerine Dream’s stirring innovations …
NICK DERISO: Take us into the process of writing a song around the acoustic pressure waves from stars on the first track of your Starmus release, called “Supernova.” Even for a group of celebrated experimenters like Tangerine Dream, this was something utterly new.
EDGAR FROESE: I’m very much interested into astrophysics myself since the early ’70s, so listening to what is called a star sound wasn’t really new to me. As everybody knows, Brian wrote a couple of books about astrophysical phenomena, so he was pretty much into this terminology, as well. If you are listening to the original wave pattern recorded through various spectrum-analyzing software programs, it doesn’t really sound like music as we know it. But modern computer technology has given us a lot of tools, which are able to transform these noises into — i.e., rhythm structures or even analyzing the frequency spectrum in order to build harmonies. As an artist, you are always looking for a new challenge, something which has significance for your experience as a musician. If you were able to accomplish such new challenge, it then must be evaluated by the fans. It is definitely not everybody’s taste in music.
NICK DERISO: Do you think you bring such an adventurous approach to music making because you were originally more interested in visual arts? How has one informed the other, over the years?
EDGAR FROESE: There is no evidence whatsoever that there is a ditch between all the known art forms. At the end of the day, you easily can figure out if an artist has something to say or not. When I switched from being a sculptor and painter to the necessity of explaining and expressing myself through musical structures, I didn’t feel the loss of abilities I had in my previous work. I still work a lot within the field of modern visual art forms, partly using computer software as well as working and fighting with a concrete piece of stone or metal. I have to compensate for my inflexibility, when I’m just sitting in front of my keyboards and composing just another score of my life experience.
NICK DERISO: While Tangerine Dream has often been cited for its stirring contributions in ambient and synthesizer-based forms, you’ve bristled before when critics have described your music as electronic. Is it because you think your vision shouldn’t be so limited – that labels tend to be too restrictive?
EDGAR FROESE: That is what the industry has always done through the ages. They thought the audience is a stupid herd, needing an explanation of which upper or bottom drawer they have to open in order to find what they are musically looking for. We started using synthesizers and electronic sequencers 40 years ago, because we wanted to jump over the wall of sound limitations created by conventional instruments. Which way the industry and the media forced themselves to find 101 descriptions of what we came up with wasn’t part of our artistic business. But we learned to let the river flow in various directions, without arguing against the labels others had given our music.
[SOMETHING ELSE! REWIND: 2011’s ‘Live in America’ captures Tangerine Dream in a 1992 show that boasts a more melodic and structured framework then filed under the title ‘new age.’]
NICK DERISO: What led you to produce an album of cover tunes recently? Was it interesting to see how you could deconstruct familiar songs from David Bowie, Pink Floyd, the Beatles and others?
EDGAR FROESE: The deep honest answer is very simple: The whole story came out of a bet between TD and our American distributor on whether or not TD could cover normal chart songs by using the high-tech gear we are working with in our studio. Finally, it turned out to be a real fun project and has been quite successful in the states. Maybe we will create a second album soon, as we really enjoyed performing these old classics and in the end we could gain some more female fans! (Laughs.)
NICK DERISO: For a group that came to fame recording groundbreaking albums like Phaedra on such comparably primitive equipment, today’s technology must seem like a dream come true. How has the process changed, as you moved from analog to digital?
EDGAR FROESE: Within the last decades, we experienced such amazing developments within the hard- and software business that many musicians started using all these tools like buying a cleaning robot for their living-room. What a huge misunderstanding, if you’re looking for a real creative approach to the world of sounds and musical structures. But it’s like shooting a movie, first of all you need to have a script with intelligent, surreal or funny stories you want to visualize. In music there is no difference, if the story you want to tell is boring and the performance is unprofessional, no high-tech equipment in the world will give you the spirit needed to accomplish your work successfully. The step from conventional to analog equipment was a formidable challenge, but even harder was the next level we reached by using the open systems of digital bits and bytes. We’re still learning the unlimited process within a musical language, which will be the common basic working platform for the future generation of creative musicians.
[SOMETHING ELSE! REWIND: As improbable as it may seem, some of 2012’s ‘Under Cover’ works so well that you wonder why they weren’t already part of Tangerine Dream’s set list.]
NICK DERISO: The band’s membership has been ever shifting since its founding in the late 1960s. Do you credit the arrival of these new voices — touring violinist Hoshiko Yamane, who is such an invigorating presence, comes to mind — with Tangerine Dream’s amazing longevity? Has it helped your ideas evolve through the band’s many eras?
EDGAR FROESE: It isn’t the focus point to hire or change band members in order to find a new approach to certain forms of creativity. It depends very much on what your goals are, in terms of new compositions or live performances. I do not want to learn to play a violin or cello on a synthesizer, when Hoshiko can do it on her electric instrument with such professional skill. So, finally you’re looking for people who have the ability to transform a musical idea into a real experience for the audience.
NICK DERISO: In collaborating with Queen’s Brian May, how much of his performance was completely improvised? Were you surprised by his ability to adapt?
EDGAR FROESE: Brian is a brilliant professional artist who understands the musical language as well as his guitar playing. We knew that we had to take certain risks working on the star-sound performance. Here, we decided to leave everything very open for improvisation. Brian came up with some very interesting guitar sounds, which did fit perfectly into the synth structures created in reflection of the sounds’ cosmic nature. The main focus was to keep the balance between the different elements, so everything could have its own significance — and even sounds which came in by coincidence had to be controlled carefully. On the two songs, Brian’s “Last Horizon” and the traditional Irish song “Sally’s Garden,” we did send quite a few e-mails back and forth about chord progressions and what arrangement would work best. Later, on location, we had a longer rehearsal — which worked very good. We had a lot of fun melding the two different worlds we originally came from.
[SOMETHING ELSE! REWIND: When Brian May joined Tangerine Dream at the Starmus Festival, the long-time Queen guitarist only confirmed that there is almost nothing he can’t do.]
NICK DERISO: Another sign of how well you were able to integrate the sounds of two great bands on Starmus arrives with a completely remodeled take on Queen’s “We Will Rock You” — in particular during its very intriguing coda. Is this a musical relationship that could continue?
EDGAR FROESE: That idea came up by surprise, because there wasn’t any plan to perform another Queen song in the first place. So Brian said, with a smile, that there wasn’t enough time to rehearse “Bohemian Rhapsody,” and to keep it more simple we should go for “We Will Rock You.” Later, during sound check, we had just about 20 minutes to rehearse that last song. As the doors were suddenly opened and the crowd got in, we hadn’t found a proper ending. What you hear on the CD is a 100 percent improvised ending — because none of us knew when and how to cut the line. So, hopefully the diehard Queen fans will forgive us as we searched for a smooth exit tout of this remarkable song.
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