Electronic band Tangerine Dream visited Iceland for the first time recently, headlining the experimental music festival Extreme Chill. They performed to a full house at Gamla Bíó on September 14th. Formed in Germany in 1967, the band is considered among the pioneers of electronic music. Tangerine Dream has been exceptionally prolific throughout its 50-year history, with over 150 albums, countless film scores, and seven Grammy nominations to its name.

Idealist Edgar Froese

The band was founded by German electronica pioneer Edgar Froese but has seen many membership changes throughout the years. Froese formed the band’s vision and was its main composer up until his death in 2015. The band’s current members, Thorsten Quaeschning, Ulrich Schnauss, and Japanese violinist Hoshiko Yamane have continued to develop Froese’s musical vision, and the band remains popular all over the world. Through the years, Tangerine Dream has inspired a wide range of musicians, from Rammstein to David Bowie to Björk.

Visual artist Bianca Froese-Acquaye is Edgar Froese’s widow and Tangerine Dream’s band manager. The Student Paper caught up with Froese-Acquaye on her last day in Reykjavík.

The listener’s personal journey

“Tangerine Dream creates very atmospheric music which produces cinema in your head,” says Froese-Acquaye. “It leaves so much space for the listeners’ own ideas, thoughts, and dreams. It is very special music, because it’s not intrusive, but triggers your own personal visual journey.”

This is a common sentiment among Tangerine Dream fans and their concerts are often described as a form of meditation. The concert at Gamla Bíó transported its audience into another world through hypnotising visuals shown on a screen above the stage. The music’s strong visual qualities are the reason it has so often appeared in films.

“The concert was performed without a break, leaving only minimal gaps between pieces, so that they flowed into one another. The idea is that the listener can get into a meditative flow without interruption and have a full, round experience of the show,” says Froese-Acquaye.

Bianca Froese-Acquaye attributes the band’s success to Froese’s strong philosophical vision. Photo/Melanie Reinisch — **Bianca Froese-Acquaye attributes the band’s success to Froese’s strong philosophical vision.** Photo/Melanie Reinisch

Stripped of their egos

Band founder Edgar Froese followed his own personal philosophy. To him, the music of Tangerine Dream needed to rise above its performers. This approach has clearly persisted; the performers at Gamla Bíó did not address the crowd until the end, and then only for a short thank-you. Previously, the band has gone so far as to turn their backs to the crowd while performing. Froese-Acquaye attributes the band’s success to Froese’s strong philosophical vision.

“He founded the band and always followed a very special vision. He was a philosopher as well as a musician and he had a very deep way of thinking about everything. He considered himself as a sort of medium who received ideas and transformed them into music. He was very interested in different religions and Zen culture, in mysticism and spirituality. I think this depth lives on in his music,” says Froese-Acquaye.

Inspired by cultural heritage: from Dante to James Joyce

Froese remained true to his personal vision throughout his life and strived for a deeper meaning behind his music. “If you look at some of the song titles, you see they have a deeper meaning. The albums often covered specific topics. For example, we have Kafka’s The Castle, James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, an album based on the works of Gustav Meyerink, Edgar Allan Poe, and Dante’s Divine Comedy. We worked together on the Dante trilogy; he composed the music and I painted 16 paintings, which were used for the cover art. We also had a live performance of Dante in a theatre in Germany, where my paintings were exhibited in the foyer. It was a very nice collaboration.”

It may come as a surprise to some, but classical music has had a big influence on the music of Tangerine Dream. Froese was inspired by such classical composers as György Ligeti, Johann Sebastian Bach, Maurice Ravel, and Arcangelo Corelli.

Quantum physics expressed through music

Throughout the band’s extensive career, the music of Tangerine Dream has undergone many different phases. During his last years, it was the world of quantum physics that captivated Froese. According to Froese-Acquaye, it was his dream to interpret the science of quantum physics through music.

“The current scientific knowledge of quantum physics is spectacular. If you trigger one quantum here, another quantum can be triggered one hundred thousand light years away. So there is a connection between the two quanta. In the fifties, Einstein already knew that quantum physics was some kind of magic. And now scientists have proved that it is! Edgar was so fascinated when he heard this that he thought, ‘I have to compose music out of this.’” And that’s how Tangerine Dream’s latest period began, the so-called Quantum Years, which started in 2014.

A sonic turning point

“From then on, Edgar no longer wanted acoustic instruments in the band. He wanted to go completely digital,” says Froese-Acquaye. “We used to have a guitarist, a percussionist, and a saxophone player, but Edgar wanted to revive the synthesisers of the seventies, because he thought that would connect best to the new era.”

The product of the Quantum Years is the album Quantum Gate, released in 2017, two years after Froese’s death. “We are still in the Quantum Years,” says Froese-Acquaye. “After that, we don’t know what phase will evolve.”

Icelanders have good taste in music

“I was very curious to see how the concert would be received here in Iceland, because I know that Icelandic people are very musical,” says Froese-Acquaye. “So many good progressive bands come from Iceland. The audience’s response exceeded my expectations; it was fantastic. It’s clear that you are really connected to good music.”

Froese-Acquaye is very open to visiting Iceland again and considers performing at Harpa an exciting next step.

Touring around Europe

The upcoming weeks hold many exciting projects for Tangerine Dream. “We are going on a big tour starting in October. We will begin in Prague, travel from there to Berlin, Warsaw, the Netherlands, Lithuania, Latvia, Stockholm, Oslo, Valencia, Madrid and Helsinki. This will all be in the span of about two weeks, so there’s a good portion of concerts ahead. In January next year, an exhibition on Tangerine Dream will open at the Barbican Centre in London.”

Examples of films, TV shows, and video games that feature Tangerine Dream music. The list is far from exhaustive.

Sorcerer (1977)

Thief (1981)

The Keep (1983)

Risky Business (1983)

Firestarter (1984)

Legend (1985)

Miracle Mile (1988)

Grand Theft Auto V (2013)

Stranger Things (2016-2017)

Black Mirror: Bandersnatch (2018)

Music as Quantum Physics - Tangerine Dream