In September 2016 Tangerine Dream performed in the beautiful historical Augusta Raurica amphitheatre in Augst, Switzerland, quite close to the city of Basel. It was one of the first concerts of the remaining three band members Thorsten Quaeschning, Ulrich Schnauss and Hoshiko Yamane after Edgar Froese had passed away in January that year.
It took almost three years for this album to be released, although it was already listed with a small cover photo in the discography part of Force Majeure, the autobiography by Edgar Froese that was released in September 2017 (see Light Flux for details).
Apparently, Ulrich Schnauss was not completely happy with the selection of the Swiss concert for release. In March 2019, at time of release, he posted on Facebook: "[...] In my opinion it represents a worst possible choice for such a degree of exposure since I personally see it as the least interesting gig of the 'quantum years': First of all, we had some pretty bad luck that day: literally minutes before our set the visuals setup collapsed [...] -- signicantly reducing the visual impact of our concert (not saying this in order to play down the impact of Finki's [Andreas Fink, ed.] beautiful light show, but Patrick [Dunn]'s imagery of course shouldn't be underestimated either). Secondly, the recording captures a moment when we still were just making rather cautious first steps -- relying heavily on pre-recorded backing tracks and far from having the necessary confidence and routine required to introduce the current level of live playing -- not even mentioning the subsequent, in my opinion more than just welcome, addition of a totally free-form, no-strings-attached 'session'-section towards the end of every gig. And yet -- the camera team had been booked, did show up and demanded a compensation for their efforts regardless of the debatable quality of the actual performance -- and rightfully so of course. As a consequence there'd always been a strong notion from Austria [Eastgate, that is, ed.] to go ahead in terms of putting out a DVD as initially planned -- again, personally though I'd have much favoured a decision in favour of artistic and/or quality control -- simply accepting the negligible financial loss. So, while I wouldn't go as far as posting a 'don't buy'-plea here, I'd still ask you not to judge the overall potential of the current line up just on the grounds of this potentially disappointing example."
Live At Augusta Raurica - Switzerland 2016 comes as a combined audio and video release, featuring the audio recording of the full concert on two CDs while the video footage is available on two DVDs with identical content, one in PAL format, the other in NTSC. The four discs come in a folded cardboard digipack with 12 page booklet, featuring credits, track listing and photos taken during the concert.
The concert's setlist is almost identical to that of the gig in Windeck some days ago and to the concert in Szczecin three months before. Thus, fans who already own the album Live At The Philharmony Szczecin - Poland 2016 will notice quite a lot of similarities, though the track order is somewhat different and two or three tracks have been exchanged between the set lists. And, of course, there is some variation in the parts that were performed live. But what is more, the complete concert is presented on video, too. So, regardless of any criticism, this release is a worthy addition to any TD collection.
A few weeks after its Double-CD/DVD release the audio version of this album became available as MP3 download at the Tangerine Dream Download Shop as well.
