Tangerine Dream – Encore

I’ll be “brief”. I attended one show on this tour. Not only that, I’m. a Tangerine Dream “nut”, as I have many audience tapes and two radio broadcasts from this 1977 tour (and now they are all posted on YouTube). On the tour, like all their others, the show is presented in two halves, with an intermission between the two. On this tour the first half, Side 1 and 2 (the first 2 tracks on the CD) are mostly NOT improvised, as they are basically the same on all the dates I’ve heard from this tour. Side/track 1 might be, and side/track 2 definitely is, from Lisner Auditorium in Washington DC. The second half of the show is improvised, and IMO the best portion of the show. When I first heard this album I was very, very disappointed that sides/tracks 3 & 4, the 2nd half of the show, and its improvised portion, sounded nothing like what I heard in concert, and nothing like what I’ve heard from all the tapes of the other dates. Odds are that side3/track 3 is a studio recording. Side/track 4 definitely is a studio recording. It wouldn’t be until 2004 when an official release of the entire Washington DC show was released, as part of the “Bootleg Box Part 2” that the CD buying public, would get to hear the amazing second half of this show. A shame, because it is wonderful. The 3 TD ’ stacks of analog synths (and Edgar Froese’s piano and electric guitar), their face-melting volume lowered for your listening pleasure is a synth and TD fan’s dream (pun intended) come true. Regardless of my “complaints“ in regards to sides/tracks 3 & 4, “Encore” is still a great record of TD’s sound in 1977. Slowed down a bit from the heyday 1974-1975 years, but very, very brutal sounding, massive sounding synths and Mellotron. As far as sound quality - the best are the Japanese pressing of the vinyl, and the first pressing of the CD, I’ve heard the US, UK, and Japanese pressings, and they’re all better than the later CDs, which seem to lose some of the bass frequencies and overall sound a bit thinner.

I wish the solo guitar parts on "Coldwater Canyon" had a clearer musical intent; as they are, they remind me too much of what one is subjected on a random Friday afternoon at Guitar Center. Otherwise, I really like this album.

After all those years (I bought the double vinyl around '78), this is still my favourite TD release since it has all their qualities and few weaknesses. For a live recording, the four pieces sound astonishingly composed, not improvised. I think there has been some editing... There are no 10-min-directionless noodlings before something interestings happens, and the sound quality is reasonable (BTW, both are the disadvantages of many of the Tangerine Tree/Leaves recordings). All four pieces are very different in style.

The first piece 'Cherokee Lane' may be the quintessence of TD in the 70s - typical sequences, mellotron, warm moog sounds. The way Chris Franke switches the sequencers between 2 to five steps is phenomenal. The following 'Monolight' has a piano and some (unfortunately quite distorted) cymbal sounds at the beginning, which are followed by an almost pop-like intermezzo, until another sequencer-based section starts and leasts until the end. The third one, 'Coldwater Canyon', is a continuous flow of the sequencers with a very pulsating guitar by Froese, which I find rather unique for a TD recording. The final piece 'Desert Dream' features cold and hypnotic sounds, a sound cloud almost without rhythmn, almost menacing, but still with a distinct development.

Well, this is the last album by TD I really liked. After this one, TD changed personnel and style and turned to commercially successful electronica.

Most bands that do live performances like to say where those live performances took place. Not Tangerine Dream on this actually quite good album. For some reason where these tracks were recorded is some kind of big secret which of course suggests the recordings were faked even if they were not. Funny thing though-I have heard recordings made of TD in Detroit & in Montreal during the bands 1977 North American tour and although they were interesting they fell short of the quality of the material on Encore. I suppose its all down to what the individual fan wants to believe. Peter Baumann returned with TD in 1981 with the soundtrack to the film Thief even though his place as a member of TD doing studio work had already been replaced by Johanns Shmoelling in 1980 on the TD studio project Tangram after PB did not participate in the 1978 TD studio project Cyclone & in the 1979 TD studio project Force Majeure, PB's solo releases were poor with the exception of his very good 1976 solo effort Transharmonicnights.