| | | The Austrian Paul Haslinger (born December 11th, 1962 in Linz, Austria) began his music studies in 1982 at the Academy of Music in Vienna. By 1985, he was playing live gigs as support act for Tina Turner and doing session work with a number of Austrian groups. He joined Tangerine Dream in 1986, a short time after Johannes Schmoelling had left the group. With Edgar Froese and Chris Franke he released the two studio albums Underwater Sunlight (1986), Tyger (1987), the live album Livemiles (1988) and several soundtracks, including Three O'Clock High (1987), Near Dark, Shy People (both 1988) and Canyon Dreams (1987, released on CD 1991). After Chris Franke had left the group, Paul Haslinger formed a duo with Edgar Froese, and they released the studio albums Optical Race (1988) and Lily On The Beach (1989) besides several soundtracks, including Miracle Mile, Destination Berlin (both 1989), Dead Solid Perfect (1989, released 1991) and L'Affaire Wallraff (1989, released 1992). In 1990 Edgar's son Jerome Froese joined the band as a regular member for the studio release Melrose, making TD a trio again.
Soon after receiving his Master's degree in musicology at the University of Vienna, Paul Haslinger decided to move from Vienna to Los Angeles in December 1990. According to official information, a couple of reasons forced him to do so. First of all he got chased by the Austrian military service. He had already gone for several medicals and if he would not have left, it would have meant serving in the Austrian army for more than one year. Another reason to move were some minor health problems he could overcome by living near the sea with less pollution. But maybe the final reason was his absolute fascination for the America lifestyle he encountered during the two tours with TD in 1986 and 1988.
According to Edgar Froese, when it comes down to real musical skills in performing and composing, Johannes Schmoelling and Paul Haslinger were the most talented people in the long list of names in the history of TD. Paul Haslinger was a very humorous man and he brought some fresh air into the band, especially after Chris Franke's departure. He also went through some hard-core education in music theory at the Vienna Conservatoire which had a very positive effect on lots of musical term-related conversations. Edgar Froese was very surprised that Paul Haslinger did not release some of his piano compositions as a solo project after moving to Los Angeles -- he still thinks that Paul Haslinger is the best man on a grand piano. Both have still frequent meetings.
In the USA Paul Haslinger produced several music material for companies, and with former TD member Peter Baumann he started new activities resulting in the album Blue Room Project (1993), but that material was never released. With the French group Lightwave Paul Haslinger released the two albums Tycho Brahe (1994) and Mundus Subterraneus (1996). Furthermore he produced a number of solo albums which were stylistically quite different from his TD productions, including Future Primitive (1994), World Without Rules (1996), Planetary Traveler (1998), and Score (1999). |
