Synthwaves

The first collaborative project by Tangerine Dream bandmates Thorsten Quaeschning, a composer and multi-instrumentalist, and Ulrich Schnauss, a synth musician, was this set of carefully crafted, intricate electronic mood pieces, built around looping synth arpeggios and circular chord progressions, the musical magic coming from the simultaneous gradual development of multiple synth parts, giving the album a continual mood of movement and development.

“Main Theme” whips up its distorted synthetic piano chords into a genuinely epic, searing storm of electronically crafted ambience, while “Rain On Dry Concrete”’s opening blippy synth arpeggio is gradually subsumed in cascades of synth washes, building up to something stately and extravagant. The plaintive piano with truly cavernous reverb intro of the third track “Slow Life” briefly turns down the ‘epic’ setting on the synths, before heading off into a series of electronically generated romantic peaks and troughs. Overall, it’s opulent, regal and euphoric synthgaze/emotronica.