The Best Of Tangerine Dream

The Pink Years

- Compilation, released April 1998 -

Cover

CD release Europe 1998
Design: Hugh Gilmour

Tracks


		[a]
1.	Genesis	5:57
2.	Nebulous Dawn [Excerpt]	6:15
3.	Sunrise In The Third System	4:20
4.	Atem [Excerpt]	9:20
5.	Circulation Of Events	5:49
6.	White Clouds	5:01
7.	Indian Summer	6:53
8.	Astral Voyager	7:03
Total running time		50:38

Details


Recording date	1969 - 1973

Notes

After the British company Castle had bought the rights for the TD back catalogue of 'The Pink Years' era, they had re-released those five early albums in 1996. Two years later they released the additional compilation The Pink Years, including some tracks from these albums, compiled by Edgar Froese himself:

Electronic Meditation (1970; track 1)
Alpha Centauri (1971; track 3)
Zeit (1972; track 2)
Atem (1973; tracks 4 and 5)
Green Desert (1973, released 1986; tracks 6 to 8)

In opposite to the compilation Book Of Dreams, released by Castle in 1995, this CD contains the un-remixed original tracks as they are featured on the regular Castle CDs. Together with The Blue Years, a compilation of tracks from 1984 to 1988, The Pink Years CD gives an overview of TD's pre and post Virgin years. This compilation contains no new material.

Liner notes by Edgar Froese for the CD release"Tangerine Dream's beginnings were an attempt to find a musical order in the chaos of the unknown which has led them to today, the brink of the new century, striving for near perfectionism.

Electronic Meditation describes an unknown, almost chaotic side of perception. It does not aspire to be art, as often is assumed, but rather, it expresses an attitude about life at the end of the sixties. Every value was questioned -- old values were overturned in order that new and different ones could develop.

Alpha Centauri and Zeit are both a continuation of what was then a revolutionary method of producing music. The average down-to-earth listener, who accepted day-to-day reality without questioning his own existence, was unable to grasp these unusual sound collages.

And this remains the case even today in the late nineties. Tangerine Dream's music, especially in those early years, has always been the soundtrack for 'head' movies. Usually, the music is associated with strange, surreal images.

The sound collages on Atem became more concrete, but one couldn't exactly speak of commercial success. Since TD's music wasn't Top 40 material, it received little airplay. No one knew how to categorize this experimental music and the reactions to it tended towards nonsense. Their German record company at that time also had no idea how to sell this kind of music.

Green Desert was originally intended as the follow-up album to Atem, but TD had meanwhile signed a record deal with Virgin Records in the UK and they left Germany to record the first Virgin album Phaedra which brought them their first worldwide success. Green Desert lay for years in the vaults, until it was released in 1986. This album reflects what later became TD's trademark: sequenced arpeggios.

The Pink Years were perhaps the most uncompromising period in the history of Tangerine Dream -- the beginnings of an adventurous journey through the world of sounds and rhythms. Beyond that they explore the possibilities of an artistic relationship between man and machine."

Releases


Europe	1998: Castle CD: CCSCD815
USA	2000: Castle CD: CMACD590