Tangerine Dream Announces “Quantum Key’ EP (Audio Sneak Preview)

tangerine-dream-quantum-keyTangerine Dream has announced Quantum Key – a new EP by the new post-Froese TD linup of Thorsten Quaeschning, Ulrich Schnauss and Hoshiko Yamane.

Tangerine Dream founder Edgar Froese died Jan 20, 2015 from the effects of a pulmonary embolism.

The band says that ‘Quantum Key will be the vangaurd of the coming Quantum Gate album’.

Here’s an audio preview:

Here’s what TD has to say about Quantum Gate:

Edgar Froese, the head and founder of Tangerine Dream, had the wonderful idea of translating the current knowledge of the quantum physics – which he was very much interested in – into sound and already started this project before his sad death in January 2015. The cupdisc MALA KUNIA was the first music out of “The Quantum Years” series which was published in November 2014 on the occasion of the MMW Festival concert in Melbourne.

It was a great fortune that Edgar still had the chance to discuss his vision with the remaining band members and that Bianca, Edgar’s wife, decided to continue with Tangerine Dream. She knew that Thorsten, Ulrich and Hoshiko could face this huge challenge with their beautiful talents. At the same time this task would be a unique chance for the music coming into life. So the band continued developing these musical ideas after Edgar’s sudden “change of his cosmic address” and you will have the chance now to listen to some wonderful tracks. In honour of Edgar!

Tangerine Dream’s Quantum Gate is available for preorder via Eastgate Music.

16 thoughts on “Tangerine Dream Announces “Quantum Key’ EP (Audio Sneak Preview)

  1. This sounds good, and sounds like TD. I’ve been a fan of Ulrich Schnauss for quite some time. Also glad to see some new blood in TD, and the tapering down off the electric guitar albums.

    This said, would love to see more variety and timbre work resulting in psychedelic transcendent textures like we heard in Phaedra, which I view as TD’s greatest album.

    1. 74-82 was an amazing time for TD, and then 90% of the rest is crap.

      This, unfortunately, sounds pretty bland. What made Phaedra great was that it wasn’t clean and polished, it was messy and live sounding. In their later music, there’s a lot of stuff that sounds proficient rather than inspired or original.

      I don’t think the blandness of this is a reflection of the current band as much as them carrying on what Froese did for the last 30 years of his career. He really went in a commercial, ‘safe’ direction.

      This does answer the question of whether it could still be TD without Froese. This sounds EXACTLY like TD – but the ‘playing it safe’ TD of recent years.

      Node or Redshift are a lot more interesting ‘Berlin-style’ bands now than TD.

    2. I’ve been a TD fan since 1967. However, I tend to side with the comments by Jerome Froese: There is no TD without Edgar. I mean no disrespect to the current line-up, but the band is just as dead as Edgar. Why would I even want to buy any new TD music when Edgar isn’t involved? If someone wants to continue Edgar’s legacy — then release material from Edgar’s vault. According to the liner notes of Machu Picchu; there is a vault, and Machu Picchu came from it. It’s pretty stupid to continue a band without the most influential and founding member.

      1. Froese was the heart of Tangerine Dream, but none of the group’s work done without Christopher Franke or Johannes Schmoelling holds up.

        It’s clear that, in his later years, he was running TD as a business that needed to crank out merchandise, rather than a group that wanted to live on the edge of technology and art.

  2. What happened to Peter Baumann’s involvement with the new TD? Wasnt he supposed to be featured on this stuff? I agree with RabitBat that it would be great if they got back to their roots and went the way of Phaedra, or even the Froese/Franke/Schmoelling sound of the 80s. They kinda lost their way after that and every album started to sound like elevator music.

    1. Apparently TD and Baumann have gone their separate way, so says the Tangerine Dream newsletter. We can only imagine why, but considering the last 10 years or so, it was a band who didn’t pay it’s musicians much, had inner fighting with members, a pushy Woman who marketed the band like a 1970s corner shop owner, more fiction than jakanory with it’s “archive” releases, and more history re-writing than Islamic State, then well …..

  3. Good to hear that TD is going back to their roots.
    Beutifulll stuff indeed, can’t wait for the release, but why EP..?
    That should be double LP release.

  4. Through all of the years you can hear the Tangerine Dream sound on every album. I like difference, as staying the same would just be a copy of a past album. Change is growth. To take Tangerine Dream as a whole there is not much not to like. Phaedra was special. Cyclone was a change in direction. I fell in love with Underwater Sunlight and Exit. With changes and growth I still find something to like and even love in the music. The anticipation of new releases and the fact that the dream never ends is exciting. In my collection of 983 CD’s I can always find a piece that takes you to a time in life. One day I made a compilation of 100 titles I did not like. I played it over and over and found my list of titles I didn’t like getting smaller.

  5. As a musician, I find it very hard to come up with fresh material and sounds that haven’t been heard before. Tangerine Dream is no different. They busted the floodgates of technology open in their heyday, but now they too are the victims of their own popularity and a technological landscape that has taken what they have created and built upon it. The same thing has happened to Kraftwerk and others. I’m sure TD wants to evolve and explore new ideas and not go backwards, just like all of us artists. Now with Edgar gone, I will cherish the early days of TD and embrace what the new members create in their own rite.

  6. I also still miss the 74-80 golden era of TD. But the “Mirage Of Reality” track from the Quantum Key album is majestic! While listening to this track you can clearly identify the influence of the 3 great artists: Ulrich, Froese, and Throsten. TD is an evolving concept. No need to go back. The past is in the past.

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