Timeless Electronic Soundscapes Between Nostalgia and Progression - A Review of Tangerine Dream's Raum

Tangerine Dream are pioneers in progressive electronic music that have been around for fifty-five years. The group has released an incredible eighty-four studio albums, with the most recent one entitled Raum. The band has had twenty-nine different line-ups in its career and the current release has been recorded by members who were not even born when the band was founded and experienced its most prolific era. The status of one current band member is even disputed. The core of this new album seems to have been recorded by band leader, multi instrumentalist and music director Thorsten Quaeschning who has been on board for seventeen years, Japanese cellist and violinist Yamane Hoshiko who has been in the band for eleven years and newest member Paul Frick on piano and synthesizer who only became an official member two years ago. As you can read, Tangerine Dream is a timeless band that constantly evolves and might still exist in one form or another in many decades from here.

Raum offers seven songs with a total running time of sixty-eight minutes that take listeners on a calm, mysterious and relaxing voyage through space and time that hearkens back to the band's classic era in the early to mid-seventies. It's obvious that such a release needs attention, focus and patience as it takes a certain time to grow with its numerous creative details.

''Portico'' for instance convinces with its dynamic, mid-paced and playful electronic sound collages that make for a more accessible tune in relatively compact seven minutes.

''In 256 Zeichen'' on the other hand has an eerie, menacing and otherworldy tone with a lack of focus, pace and structure that invites to lose yourself in its ambitious running time of nineteen minutes.

The electronic influenes in the soothing ''You're Always on Time'' sound much more experimental, futursitic and mechanical as they would blend in perfectly on the soundtrack of any contemporary science-fiction movie such as Arrival or video game such as Mass Effect.

Closing title track ''Raum'' combines the different aforementioned approaches perfectly and includes a wonderful symphonic coda that could have even been written by a classical orchestra.

It's obviously impossible to compare this release to the eighty-three others but Tangerine Dream's Raum sounds diversified, inspired and timeless. Fans of old date should appreciate it for its references to the group's innovating early years. Occasional listeners and newcomers might dig this album as it introduces yet again a slightly modified line-up and convinces as one of the greatest more recent releases of the German-Japanese progressive electronic music group. In chaotic times of change, listening to Tangerine Dream's imaginative Raum offers some welcome escapism and invites to be discovered over and over again.

Final Rating: 80%