I've followed Tangerine Dream for 42 years, seen them 41 times, and listened to hundreds of albums, and they are still the best - never matched

I have now listened to a multitude of reaction channels. JP my friend, no one is as thoughtful, thorough, and committed to excellence as you. I’ve always been a detailist, and that’s why I enjoy listening to your reactions. Besides that, you’re just a nice guy.

Tangerine Dream are masters of atmosphere.

As a teenager in the eighties, most of my friends listened to Brit-pop, some to hard rock. I listened to Jethro Tull, King Crimson and especially to Tangerine Dream. This album was my first, since then TD hasn't let me go. I'm captivated by these soundscapes, how they flow into each other, become more intense and die down again, while a new idea is already making its way to the fore. TD were groundbreaking, and surely for me as a teenager in the eighties. Here was something so different from anything else on the radio.

I often imagine Tangerine Dream's ambient music as an inner journey through sonic landscapes, ever shifting between the light and the dark.

Rubycon, a great TD album. It is timeless and still sounds like the far future now as it did back in the 70's. Such a amazing sonic journey, such atmosphere. It is a great experience, So glad you have taken the time and effort to reaction to this music that is so far away from established norms. Not very many people will do that.

I brought this CD to work, a younger colleague asked me what it was. I said it was one of TD's three best albums, after which he asked me to listen to it in the office. I laughed at him and said "Just go ahead, enjoy it." After an hour he returned it and said "Now I know why everyone says that you are very strange". I laughed again and answered him "And you are all very strange to me".

I just listened to this album recently because I knew you'd be doing it on a long-song Saturday, and I absolutely loved it! I love albums where it feels like you can just live in them for a bit -- it's very atmospheric and still sounds futuristic after all these years. Thank you for the reaction👍

Ambient berlin school Classic.

Karl Dallas (RIP) interviewing Chris Franke from TD in 1975: Rubycon Part I The beginning is Baumann on Fender Rhodes piano, “playing very lonely notes”, with bell-like Moog tones from Franke, joined by an oboe sound from Froese’s Mellotron. All three lines come closer and closer together, but there are quiet spaces between the notes. “It’s the first time we have put breaks between the notes, but it’s very important, so you can get your brain clear for what’s coming.” A very high melody line on Franke’s Moog comes over the long, slow notes, is joined by tapes of mixed voices on the Mellotron with glissandi from Baumann. The Moog melody returns and Froese changes to strings tapes for a brief section of trumpet-like tune and strings. “Peter has some very nice voltage-controlled bits with the synthi. Sometimes he comes very near with his glissandi, through the well-tempered melody line. I like it very much if there are two scales of notes together -- a well-tempered scale and a not-tempered scale producing, like birds, quarter notes, like Schoenberg. “This part gives me the impression of a very big river, at the end of the river coming into a big sea, the ocean. It’s very liquid.” Wind noise is followed by a cymbal-like tone created by a cluster of 20 or 30 notes very close together and a very low bass, with feelings of fuzz in it. “It’s a little meditation tone.” After a rhythm sequence, Froese plays the main theme on the strings followed by a remarkable duet between Baumann’s Fender Rhodes and Froese’s oboe-tapes, in which they swap phrases and half phrases. The rhythm continues, very ostinato, “a repetitive rhythm like the Negroes make it, very often”, Baumann switches to organ and the duet continues. The rhythm doubles and Franke adds an overdubbed piano tape loop: a backwards tape is joined to a forwards tape so that the sound comes to its attack and then dies away. The rhythm becomes very complex, with Moog tones and snare-drum sounds, plus overdubbed piano, “prepared” with pieces of wood stuck between the strings to give a more percussive effect. Over this Froese plays chords and Baumann plays a very high melody line on organ. A change in the rhythm is overlaid by clashing sounds from Baumann’s voltage-controlled oscillator, played over a very fast-running Leslie speaker and very long echo delay. Froese plays a reprise of the original oboe melody while the decay of the snare drum sound becomes longer and longer so that the beat disappears. Later Baumann plays grand piano over a Leslie. “In this piece I think all the melodies, rhythms and all the sounds are much, much more complex and much better than on Phaedra. I think it is a step forward, this record.” The piece ends with a long sitar-like sound created by scraping the strings of a grand piano with a piece of metal, recording it, cutting off the attack at the beginning of the note, and playing it back on multi-track at different speeds, giving several different pitches. The rhythm becomes simpler and simpler, moving from three to two to one single tone, and the piano loops are faded across to each other, making chords, slowly shifting.

In my humble opinion the greatest track the synthesizer kings of the 70s was "WHITE EAGLE" an absolute masterpiece from Tangerine Dream.👍

I first saw tangerine dream in November 1974 at the free trade Hall manchester. Ticket was £1. 10p. They used quadraphonic sound and I saw them every time they were in the UK. From then on. Franke froese baumann was the greatest era in my opinion. I've seen lots of changes in members of the band. And thanks to thorsten, he is keeping the name going to this day and onwards.

If you think the ending of part one of Rubycon is scary, wait till you hear part two!

Tangerine Dream remains my "forever" music. I stiil enjoys all theses albums, year after years. Great review.

There is a natural flow in this music. It's ambient in nature but also very progressive in the way the piece (and its second part) is constructed and sonically not that far removed from psychedelic vibes. Rubycon is a complete album because it relies as much on mysterious and dreamlike atmospheres as on the most bewitching sequences, with an underlying melodic aspect while not seeking to play on that alone, but rather on a broader musical exploration as much as possible ! For me, A masterpiece.

The part from 9m:20s, that really kicks in at 10m:30s has haunted me for decades. Whenever there's any contemplation of my Existence, or the nature of Reality ... this is the backing track. There's something profound, sublime and timeless about it, as though they found a key to unlock some transcendental secret.

Many a time in high school in the late 70s, I’d roll home at 2am from partying with my friends, and given what was ingested, there was no way I was going to be falling asleep. Down to the basement I’d go, put this album on with headphones (or Phaedra, or Stratosphere etc.). I’d turn on an old rabbit-ears black and white TV, tuned to a channel that didn’t broadcast which gives you snow on the screen. I’d dial the contrast and brightness to get a nice effect. Then sit back and listen and watch as the most amazing animation unfolded before me. I never got tired of that trick and was amazed at how the music plus my brain in the state it was in could just generate those images - like dreaming awake. Later on in life I learned that part of the signal that was being picked up by the TV, and generating that snow, is signal from the cosmic microwave background radiation, some of the first signals we can see after the big bang. Somehow makes it more special a memory.

Whether it's suggested by the album cover or not, I don't know, but I always see movement of water in all forms and shapes "with my mind's eye" when I hear this album. It is absolutely beautiful and spell-binding. Deep, essential music :) Glad to hear your experience about it! All hail TD!

Jeanine and I have very different ways of experiencing music. I see inner movies when I close my eyes and listen. When it is music with lyrics the lyrics usually influence what I see with my inner eye a lot; for example when I listen to "A Plague of Lighthouse Keepers" I see the lighthouse and somehow get into it, I see the two ships colliding and sinking and so on. Jeanine is a synaesthesist. This means she tastes, smells and sees music when she listens to it. As to what she sees it is just colors, (very different ones depending on the music; she says she even sees colors she can't see with her eyes), but what she smells and tastes is often more specific. She says she has a salty taste at the beginning of "Rubycon" which develops into things like smoked salmon and, towards the end, into a really nasty taste of fried potatoes with bacon and way too much salt in them. For part one of "Rubycon" my inner movie is this: It is a sunny day, and I am an at ocean beach. Suddenly it gets overcast, the temperature drops a few degrees, and I see two riders appearing from the right galloping along the beach (that's when the rhythm comes in), one chasing the other. The first rider is a young man on a white horse. He is being chased by the Grim Reaper on a skeletal horse who occasionally swings his scythe at the man but always misses (I see this every time when these swelling chords you compared to the beginning of "Roundabout" come in). They disappear out of sight to the left. At the end the Grim Reaper returns from the left riding slowly with the body of the young man in front of him on his skeletal horse. I am a storyteller and have a very vivid imagination. Jeanine and I envy each other for the way we experience music; I would really love to taste or smell music like her too, and she would love to have my imagination.

I bought this album as soon as it came out in 1975, because I was so taken by Phaedra. This track, Rubycon, part one, it's probably my all-time favourite Tangerine Dream piece of music. It has been played in the background as I used to draw paint fantasy art, and suddenly stimulated and inspired many of my works. Rubycon, part two is also pretty amazing, especially the weird voice, things and Air Raid Siren like keyboards. I have mini tangerine dream albums, but not as many as I have, Steve Roach albums, which number in the 70s . Tangerine dream sent me on my ambient journey, and was quickly followed by Klaus Schulze (RIP), Robert Rich, and Steve Roach.

You’ve got to think when this was recorded, glam rock was the in thing especially in the uk, that’s why this is mind blowing, well ahead of there time. Masterpiece

My single favorite piece of electronica. Even possibly my single favorite piece of music.❤ Also possibly the most inventive use of sequencers. Nobody who hears this forgets it.

The piano chord is 'backward reverb' - you record a piano chord, reverse the tape and then play it through reverb. The tape is then reversed again and the reverb fades in before the chord. That tape is then glued to a section the right way round - actually TD probably just used a reversed piano chord and then edited it into normal piano chord. It's a great studio effect

This is an album to listen to laying on your bed in the dark (which I have done). It takes you places (no drugs necessary). I think the piano sound is created by reversing the tape so it plays the note backwards, getting louder then cutting off.

Wau I am amazed at the reaction video of the German electronic band Tangerine Dream I have a lot of vinyl and CD albums so many I don't know exactly how many. Founded in 1967 and they still exist today despite the death of band founder Edgar Froese in 2015.

This song for me sounds like a time machine built as a submarine which gets lost on an oceanic travel trying to find a specific point of time in human's ancient history. Instead it finally reaches a new unknown shore and the story goes on for part 2 ...!

Great analysis Justin. TD were pioneering new ways to create sounds electronically, pushing boundaries and finding their style of layers of sounds and sequences that would be their trademark for decades - even to the current line up of the Band. I can understand why not everyone would 'get ' this type of music but it was groundbreaking and even JM Jarre went to see them live in France and was wowed by their music. I hope you will keep dropping in on their Catalogue. I know some here only like their 70' s output but I think they shone in the early 80's when they pioneered Digital composition. Thanks again. Love your channel.

It's brilliant - at some stage do 'Ricochet' though, 'live' ish album from around the time and is my favourite

This is so cool! I regularly listen to several different reaction channels (mostly 60s & 70s pop) but this is the first time I've seen someone tackle some old school electronica. (Been a TD fan since 1988.) Really enjoyed your analysis. Going to have to check out the rest of your videos.

Takes me back. I never really heard these guys until the 1980s but it was still mind blowing at the time.

Tangerine Dream are the soundtrack to my youth (amongst others). These early Virgin years are may favourite and if you haven't yet, please listen to Stratosfear. I appreciated your comments acknowledged the time at which this recording came out. Its important to put it in context and indeed, that makes it all the more amazing. TD were great exponents of and ambassadors for the forthcoming synth revolution.

That keyboard build and cut-off is the same trick Yes used at the beginning of 'Roundabout'. It was achieved by hitting a piano chord, recording it and then playing it backwards.

As a life long fan of Tangerine Dream I think their finest album is Tangram from 1980. Its when they reached a peak in creativity.

Amazing! Their greatest track IMO

The only TD album I know is Phaedra. On first listen, this sounds similar to Phaedra but with more depth and more sounds, so definitely a progression in their music. A good point about this sounding more organic than electronic.

Great to see/hear TD on this channel. Looking forward to TD peaks album imo: Ricochet!

I’m a big fan of Tangerine Dream for over 45 years now. Rubicon is a good album, the first one that wasn’t experimental music, but the albums after this are much better. My personal favorites are: White eagle, studio album Pergamon, live album Have you ever seen a picture of all the equipment they’re using? kzfaq.info/get/bejne/nZNhpMuLm62wiXk.html

Rubycon was the album that bridged the gap between the more experimental albums of the past and a slightly more user friendly sound track style.. I think The band have a Copyright on the name, so it's not been used on commercial products. However, there was a British Vape juice that was originally called Tangerine Dream. However, it quickly changed to Tangerine Cream, so there may have been a bit of official finger wagging, and the "You can't use this name as its Taken. One last thing about the Rubycon album. This album as you know was released in 1975, but it's so ahead of its time it's frightening, and there was no one else making this kind of music except for klaus Shulze and Some Ashra Temple, which both had tie in with TDin the past. Its an astonishing album in my opinion

very sneaky is Tangerine Dream... very. When listening to them it's like listening to a symphony... listen to them enough, you're hooked big time. Happy you ventured here JP... respect. Highly recommend "Ricochet" for your next adventure with TD... it's a shocker.

i used to listen to this , phaedra & Ricochet while reading H.P. Lovecraft...beautiful days of great discoveries,...

Heyyyyy, I got a mention xD Two years later, I knew you'd get around to this eventually. Some of the best ambient there is.

So grateful for your diverse music selections and your enthusiasm for music. ✌

Justin! Rubycon part 2 is even better!!

Justin, please share your Fave Top 25 artists you've discovered thru yer channel. It will help us .

Let's get things nice and sparkling clear. The river in Italy that Caesar crossed is spelt Rubicon. Rubycon, according to Google, is a Japanese electronics company founded in the 50's. Could be that TD was doing some homage to the company or it was just a cool title for an album. Who really knows?

Tangerine Dream's albums up into the early 80's are all pretty strong....

I know nothing of Tangerine Dream except the did the music for Gregory's Girl, and I liked that... I actually thought they were Scottish given it was a small independent scottish movie that went big (in the 80's)!!! Feels J M Jarre type of vibe... trippy techno!

Stratosphere is personally one of their best albums the title track and invisible limits are amazing great stuff

WOW , I am impressed. Another reaction video from one of my favorite bands. Keep it going. Do Ricochet next!

Recommendation: the whole Tangram album

When I was playing world of warcraft, I had an addon that played my own playlist of music for the different zones. This one I used for Black Rock Mountain / Black Rock Spire.

Unforgetable brilliance.

been listening to tangerine dream sine the 80's you had the same reactions i had at the same parts. loved watching this with you

Ooo! A shout out (and you pronounced it right!) - thanks! IMO this, "Phaedra", and "Stratosfear" are the three best TD albums, along with their track "No Man's Land" (from "Hyperborea") and Edgar Froese's solo album "Ages". Rubycon, to me has a very oceanic feel - I always love what I call the "underwater piano" sounds. The synth-oboe sound in the sequencer segment always reminds me of Ravel's "Bolero".

It is always interesting to read the reviews of older albums when they were first released, for one is regularly astonished at often the critics just didn't get it. Of course, there is a sense that this is partly unavoidable with any new release, in that it takes time to truly appreciate any new development in music (or any art form). As a kid, whenever I heard this kind of music, I always imagined myself alone on a spaceship hurtling through the outer reaches of space, getting lost in the overwhelming mystery of existence. I really like nachenty's comment (see below) about the inner journey aspect as well. The amount of work it took to come up with this kind of music is mind boggling. I swear, throw in a mellotron and sequencers and I'm yours. This music is wondrous.

So nice to see someone reacting to TD! Rubycon was my first TD album. I purchased it as a blind buy on vinyl for $6 at a Mom and Pop record store in my late teens back around 1979/1980. I just loved the look of the album cover. I had never heard anything like it before and immediately became a lifelong fan. I bought everything they ever released up until the early 1990s when they seemed to lose their inventiveness, but I still listen to their pre-90s albums frequently, and this one is a sentimental favorite. Love the seagulls!

Tangram by Tangerine Dream super album

This!!! One for the ages!

So awesome! I love Tangerine Dream. They keep getting better. I like their 80s stuff the best, but it’s all good!

That piano sound is a chord played backwards.

First TD I bought was Cyclone in 1985 (still in my top 3 by them along with Encore and Force Majeure)... I got the Dream Sequence compilation the same year and was amazed how diverse the music was... there was a short sequence from Rubycon on that compilation I recall. I stayed with them up until the early 90s... I think the last CD I got was Rockoon which wasn't my cup of tea... I actually liked elements of their later 80s/90s work (e.g. Lily on the Beach, Tyger, Underwater Sunlight) a lot but agree the best stuff was earlier... very interesting band who had a lot of changes. Seems like the modern incarnation is actually playing the best elements of all the eras...

Justin thank you so much. Please find a dvd called Canyon Dreams by Tangerine Dream. They spent a month or so taking video and writing music to go with it from their time in the Grand Canyon. Enjoy and thanks again. Sorry for being absent for a while

Just wait till you get to Stratosfear. That album is etched into my soul.

The Tangerine Dream! A mixologist friend of mine created that drink, back in the mid-90s, and submitted it to the tequila company that was the base as part of an internal contest. I seem to recall it was a margarita variant, using Casta tequila (silver anjeho, if I remember correctly which I probably don't), Var der Humm tangerine liquor, lime juice, and... some sweetener (simple syrup? if I was doing it today, I'd use agave). It was amazing, and I still have two of the hand-blown martini glasses we got with each drink. The bartender made those for a year or so, before Van der Humm (which was South African) stopped being imported. Great memories. :)

Oh you make me curious to the track!

Quel musique ! Tangerine Dream était un super groupe , quel époque, rubycon super composition musicale , MUSIQUE IMTEMPORELLE

Try Ricochet which is my favourite one from TD

That criticaster at the end there reminded me of so many criticasters when the progs were laying out the future of ear desserts. Back when synths were analog, and all sounds had to be designed, the trick was to try and tape everything, and make incremental changes for paths of exploration. Today, it is as if all instruments are autotuned and all beats held to military precision. This is both a blessing an a curse. I discovered the blessing side one auspicious day when I saw that Misters Moog and Kurzweil were going to be demonstrating their new Kurzweil synthesizer at MIT later that day. Long story short..."Sold, American!" (a throwback to tobacco days). 10k in the mid-'80s was real money. Experience was limited to playing them in music stores, until the price point came down to their 2k K2000. Most of my shared music was from those learning curve beasts. Thanks for digging on this great pioneering music. I had Phaedra and a double album, but was unfamiliar with this beautiful creation.

Check out TD's live albums at some point. And I'm just going to keep bugging you on this Justin, Todd Rundgren's "A Treatise On Cosmic Fire" In my opinion, one of the best early electronic music pieces ever!!! But it would be a real long song Saturday for sure!! 🤘🔥🤘

Well done JP, you took me back to 1975 when my brother played me this and I loved Tangerine Dream from then on. Froese, Franke and Bauman were the best composers. They did plenty of film scores too, probably the most atmospheric is Scorcerer. Check it out. Love your channel. 🖖🎼🎶🎵

This is such a gorgeous record. I like the idea of taking a song like Pink Floyd's echoes cutting out any pop music parts and then stretching what's left out to 30 to 40 minutes. In fact I feel like it's the perfect companion piece for Pink Floyd's Meddle. I need to get this on vinyl so the next time I torture the family with echoes I can throw this on right after it.

... JP, have you tried Macula Transfer by Edgar Froese? If not, highly recommended! :-) ...

Please, pretty please 🙏 do TD’s Ricochet at some point. That album is amazing.

For me, this is Tangerine Dream's sublime masterpiece. Phaedra was experimental but this time they knew what they were doing. It deserves to be heard properly, so it's the opposite of ambient. I don't know why people refer to such music as "ambient". It isn't background music, so turn it up! There are excellent musicians who are still basically recreating this and Ricochet, and good luck to them. It's worth doing. But there is a magic to Rubycon that has stayed with some of us for nearly 50 years now.

This, to my ears, is better and more accessible than Phaedra owing to the pleasant melodies and the rhythmic sequencing that starts around the 10 minute mark (in your video) - they had perfected their style by this point and that's confirmed by (official) bootlegs of many of their improvised shows from 1975-78. Kraftwerk tend to get most of the plaudits for the seminal nature of this type of electronic music but that's because they embraced pop (wisely for their bank balance, but sometimes disappointingly for people like me who like to explore the 'new') On the other hand, TD perhaps were too seduced by the 'film soundtrack' bucks to go wildly off on a tangent thereafter. Nevertheless, Rubycon might be their finest 35 minutes.

This is my favorite TD album.

My favourite all time album. And part 2 is even better.

I went to see them in June (current line-up: Thorsten Quaeschning, Paul Frick and Hoshiko Yamane) and heartily recommend their most recent offering Raum. Had a chat with Thorsten and Hoshiko after the show. Very friendly people!

Great appraisal of a great album!

At the time of this album (give or take a year) TD played gigs in Cathedrals across Europe. I missed seeing them at Coventry Cathedral, not far from where I used to live, but I did see Klaus Schulze (early TD member) there about 1982. Very atmospheric.

they are unique and a little bit goes a long way, when your in the mood for something like this, they satisfy.

I do believe the first part of Rubycon is practically just Edgar Froese as he had a love for the mellotron. His solo album "Epsilon in Malaysia Pale" is practically just Mellotron with a few other keyboards added. I think the TD sound was defined by the Moog Sequencer, and was very unique, but copied by a couple of other electronic Krautrock artists. I know that the Sequencer was used almost like and instrument its self in the way that rhythmic patterns where switched by hand in both recording and live settings. The use of Reel to Reel tape was also unique to them at that time. Everything was practically played on the fly, so there must have been alor of running about between keyboards and Sequencer before it got up on to tape

I own all the Tangerine Dream albums up to Live Miles not including the soundtracks. Rubicon is a great album. It may sound minimal but there is a lot going on there. I think it might be the only one that has "Prepered Piano". They sure didn't avoid experimenting. If you like Rubicon, you have to check out the Edgar Froese album "Epsilon in Malysian Pale". It's an excellant companion piece to Rubicon. There are two versions. I'd seek out the original mix. Enjoy.

Now try TOMITA who did similar sound stages and synth versions of some classical pieces.

SPACE - MAGIC FLY 1977 Full Album

With Rubycon everything came together perfectly. It's all downhill from there on.

One day you should listen to Encore, Tangerine Dream’s album live performance in the US tour. Of course, after listening to Mike Oldfield’s “Crises” side 1.

10 minute intros !? Then, "Godzilla, mother fakers ! I must have O D'ed on that chit !!" I bought this album in 1974 and about 50 other of theirs throughout the years Next EXIT then LEGEND ,..etc.

Shades of Pink Floyd, same year, wish u were here, hmmm… I prefer Stratosfear.

D R O I D S - STAR PEACE 1977 electro atmospheric classics full album recommend it

Cool. Prefer this to Phaedra.

I think Ricochet is their best work JP but each to their own!

TD was great till Canyon Dreams.

Oh no, a soundscape... ZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

This is not "music" for me, sorry.

Ambient masterpiece. Texturally similar to Rick Wright’s keyboard work in early PF.