Born on D-Day in East Prussia, Edgar Froese was one of the most important German musicians of the post-war era. Inspired by an encounter with Salvador Dali in the late ‘60s, Froese’s visionary synthesizer work both as a solo artist and the lone constant in man-to-machine greats Tangerine Dream made him a leading luminary of the Berlin School, alongside the likes of Manuel Göttsching, Florian Fricke of Popul Vuh, and Cluster. Froese composed some of the deepest prog rock explorations ever pressed to vinyl along with a host of excellent soundtracks through the ‘70s and ‘80s. Following his death at the age of 70, here is a primer to his decades of ambitious music.
Dropped in between totemic Tangerine Dream albums like Phaedra and Rubycon, Froese’s second solo effort, 1975’s Ypsilon in Malaysian Pale, finds him vibrating on a rarefied cosmic plane. He eschews the stiff, clicking rhythms and cold precision of German krautrock practitioners like Kraftwerk in favor of tones and pulses that are decidedly more warm and humid. The expansive “Maroubra Bay” moves from eerie to placid to pulse-quickening, making it the ideal soundtrack for astral projection—or traveling up the Nung River towards Colonel Kurtz.
Director William Friedkin once said that had he known of Tangerine Dream a few years before starting work on his 1977 flick Sorcerer, he would have used the group to score his hallmark horror film, The Exorcist. While Sorcerer signaled the end of the American auteur era at the tail end of the ‘70s, it has since been re-appraised, thanks in no small part to the soundtrack’s ability to ratchet-up tension with every turn of its synthesized screw. The dread-inducing, heart-squeezing “Betrayal” can also be heard in the trailer for another ‘70s cinema cult classic, The Warriors.
Froese’s fourth solo record, 1978’s Ages, is a titanic double-album affair with plenty of side-long mental journeys. But even the most epic cosmic trips need brief respites on terra firma, and Froese’s gentle side appears on the four-minute gem, “Ode to Granny A”. White noise bursts become warm as Jacuzzi jets, a tambourine gets tapped, and Froese’s melodic line evokes comparison to his fellow countrymen, Mœbius and Roedelius of Cluster.
A solo keyboard exploration from Froese captured live on German television in 1981, this performance finds our man in mirror shades and a blond mullet, wringing all sorts of squeals, cries, and Venusian thunderstorms from his Oberheim Xa.
Having explored the inner cosmos for their most devout fans ever since their inception, Tangerine Dream’s 1981 album Exit features sleek new keyboards for streamlined melodies, along with pounding drums (coupled to drum machines) moving ever so assuredly towards more defined rock structures. “Chronozon” represents the band at their most anthemic, and more than 30 years on, the heavy kick and swarming synthesizers make for a left-field dance track.
Kamikaze is a forgotten German film from 1982 most notable for being Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s last film role (as a bloated police detective), but Froese’s soundtrack is chock-full of primitive yet strangely danceable cues. One track translates as “Police Disco”, while the main theme is a chugging-yet-eerie cha-cha that evokes the drum machine signal chains that Craig Leon used the year prior on Nommos.
Comprising the second side of Froese’s 1983 album Pinnacles, slotted between overlooked early-‘80s Tangerine Dream records like White Eagle and Hyperborea, this title track was purportedly inspired by the artist’s travels across the Australian Outback. Arid yet propulsive, it’s built around a tumble of drums and an airy synth patch that anticipates Gang Gang Dance by 25 years.
As the ‘80s rolled on, Tangerine Dream contributed soundtracks for Michael Mann’s Thief and Katherine Bigelow’s Near Dark. But while Bob Seger may be the artist that springs to mind when most think of Tom Cruise’s sock-sliding Risky Business, Tangerine Dream handled 1983 film’s soundtrack. “Love on a Real Train”—as sensuous as Rebecca De Mornay’s turn as Lana—resides somewhere between Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians and ‘80s synth-pop. A classic of the era, it most recently popped up again thanks to a version done by Swedish act Studio.