Tangerine Dream

West Berlin and the Pink Years

Tangerine Dream was founded in West Berlin in 1967 by Edgar Froese, who was the only constant member until his death. Froese had come to the city in the mid-1960s to study art and had played in a psychedelic rock band called The Ones, which made one single. Early shows were at the Zodiak Free Arts Lab, and one early grouping played for Salvador Dali. Wikipedia says the name came from a misheard line in "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds".

The Pink Years on the Ohr label brought Electronic Meditation (1970), Alpha Centauri (1971), Zeit (1972) and Atem (1973), with Klaus Schulze and Conrad Schnitzler passing through the early line-ups. John Peel named one of them a record of the year, Atem on Wikipedia's account and Zeit on uDiscover's. In September 1973 Froese signed a five-year contract with Richard Branson's Virgin, with the trio of Froese, Christopher Franke and Peter Baumann working together since June 1971.

Phaedra and the Virgin years

Phaedra, released on February 20, 1974, was recorded in November and December 1973 at The Manor in Shipton-on-Cherwell, Oxfordshire, with Phil Becque engineering, after the equipment was trucked from Berlin. It reached number 15 in the United Kingdom, number 13 in Australia and 196 on the Billboard 200. Rubycon (1975), Stratosfear (1976), the Sorcerer soundtrack (1977), Cyclone (1978), Force Majeure (1979) and Tangram (1980) followed, and Schmoelling joined in 1979.

The Blue Years, on Jive Electro, began with Exit (1981) and Hyperborea (1983), and the group scored over twenty films in the 1980s, among them Thief, Legend and Firestarter; the full tally is given as more than sixty. Risky Business came out in 1984, and Franke left in 1987 or 1988, depending on where Wikipedia is read.

After Froese

Froese died on January 20, 2015 in Vienna. In April 2015 Quaeschning, Ulrich Schnauss, Hoshiko Yamane and Froese's widow, Bianca Acquaye, pledged to continue the band, and the first post-death show was in Szczecin on June 9, 2016. Later releases include Quantum Gate (2017), Recurring Dreams (2019) and Raum (2022). The current line-up is Quaeschning, Yamane and Paul Frick, who joined on June 9, 2020. A 2023 tour was the largest of their career, and the fan project Tangerine Tree shared nearly 300 hours of unreleased concerts between 2002 and 2006. They influenced Porcupine Tree, Steven Wilson, M83 and Future Sound of London, and about 35 hours of their stems went into the Grand Theft Auto V score.