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Customer Reviews of Aqua

An exquisite and unforgettable experimental album
"Aqua" is the first solo album of Edgar Froese, the founder of Tangerine Dream, an album recorded in early 1974, on the wave of the band's international success, "Phaedra". The album shows how great Edgar's compositional input was in these ancient times. Sadly, this wasn't so in the 1980s. For this reason, and because of the objective qualities of Aqua, I dare say that this album is a must-have for all Tangerine Dream fans, especially those who love the band's music from the early period - and for those who like good electronic music with an experimental bent.

'Aqua', the long title track, is a long moody suite, which is dream-like, nostalgic, detached. With just organs and early 'analog' synthesizers, Edgar Froese paints musical landscapes which seem to be a journey into the unknown. Captivated, you will be listening to this track over and over again. I claim that there is hardly better music to accompany reading. With a minimal instrumentarium, Edgar Froese was able to deliver so much emotion, so much soul-inspiring content, that it's hard to believe. None of his later albums are as good as this one. This is a masterpiece of electronic music.

'NGC891', another long suite, starts with a lovely analog sound imitating the aircraft sound, you know the one; I am sure you have spent endless hours as a kid out there, in the open field, in the forest, in the meadow, inspecting bugs, wonders of nature in complete silence, to suddenly hear this distant roar of a supersonic aircraft, startling you for a second or two. For me, this is the album of impressions from my childhood. Then, after a few minutes, a bubbling basso continuo enters, and the track becomes a fast journey into the clouds of imagination. With Chris Franke's help, Edgar Froese augmented 'NGC891' with a Moog synthesizer bass passage which will set any audiophile of electronic music on their knees. The remaining tracks, 'Upland' and 'Panorphelia' constitute musical experiments much in the vein of the then-recent Tangerine Dream albums, "Atem" and "Phaedra".

When I was 8 years old, I visited Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz's museum in southern Poland, where mout-agape, I admired the fantastic experimental pictures of the malign artist. The small museum in a wooden cottage made a long-lasting impression on the young moose, also because the musical background was as mysterious as the paintings themselves. The old tape-player churned out sounds which were fascinating, and since I have always had a penchant for being lost in thoughts, I was mesmerized. I asked the attendant what the music was, and it turned out to be Edgar Froese. Being unable to pronounce the name, I memorized it, and only years later I recalled this adventure. However, "Aqua", since it was this album that I was hearing in the museum, planted a seed in my young soul, fertilized my imagination. Well, I have listened to Tangerine Dream and Edgar Froese all my life and I am happy to have discovered this music so early. Thus, if you are the dreaming type of person, you might enjoy this album as much as I do. if your children are small bookworms, if they have an introvert, introspective nature, perhaps you could play this album to them during evenings, silently in the background, while you read or tell them stories. Trust me, it will be the experience they will never forget.

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A little-known classic; well worth a listen
Edgar Froese's solo career has spanned all of the years since Tangerine Dream first signed with Virgin and represents an important and less showy side to his music. It has to be said, though, that his solo releases tend to be less well structured and show far less development than some of the contemporaneous TD releases. There are times, indeed, when they seem to be little more than sketches or musical doodlings, slipped into circulation to keep the fans quiet! Fortunately, that isn't the case here: "Aqua" was the first Froese solo release (dating from 1974, shortly after "Phaedra") and it is also just about the best, I'd say, with the music being almost as fulsome as the full band's output of the time.

Stylistically, "Aqua" is something of a hybrid between TD's newer Mellotron-driven sound of "Phaedra" and earlier works, like "Zeit", which used large amounts of 'pure' electronics from early synthesisers like the VCS3, and the Farfisa organ. The two major works on the album are 'Aqua' and 'NGC891'. These both add a new element-rare in TD's music generally-taped environmental sounds.

'Aqua' uses the sound of running water and gurgling synth voices to introduce a 17-minute study of water-like sounds, beneath brittle, reverberating rattles that suggest the creak and groan of large ice structures, and soaring choirs of synthetic voices. The work is both peaceful and eerie, and very reminiscent of the second movement of "Zeit", 'Nebulous Dawn'. This is one of Froese's (and TD's) finest tracks.

The 10-minute long 'Panorphelia' makes use of the pulsed white noise idea of 'Movements of a Visionary' from "Phaedra". Here, this introduces a solid and cleverly developed sequencer pulse over which the Mellotron sings a rambling but simple tune that sounds to be setting up another classically worked out number. Unfortunately, though, from about the midway point of the track, Froese seems to forget where things were heading and so they are left to carry on in the same vein. Boredom is just about setting in as the track winds to a close.

The title 'NGC891' continues the space theme of earlier albums (the designation refers to a galactic nebula, which can be found just to the left of the double star Alamak, or gamma Andromedae, in case you're wondering!). The music, though, is more firmly rooted here on planet Earth, as recordings of jet aircraft taking off and miscellaneous traffic sounds are woven into its 15 minutes of mostly pulsing LFO and sequencer-driven bass, overlaid with delicate Mellotron lines and some beautifully programmed Moog voices. The sleeve notes make much of the artificial head recording system used to capture the stereo effect of the environmental sounds incorporated here. I have to say that I have never found this system to be particularly effective, not even when listened to through headphones as is usually suggested. Certainly, any accuracy of stereo representation is somewhat spoiled here by the fact that the louder sounds overloaded the analogue tape onto which they were recorded, resulting is some rather jarring clipping and crackling distortion of the jet engine sounds. Nevertheless, the musical use made of these sounds is very good and the piece as a whole is brilliantly structured, constantly developing and never boring, making this track one of my all-time Froese/TD favourites. I just wish he (or they) had continued to explore the possibilities that environmental sound recordings had to offer into the digital recording age. [If you haven't already discovered them, check out the work of the acoustic ecology movement, as well as the works of the French Canadian acousmatic composers to see what I'm talking about--web addresses supplied on request!]

Finally, 'Upland' is another of those Froese tracks that starts with a couple of good ideas but then fails to do much with them except repeat them over and over. Strangely, that approach works to quite good effect here, with the relentless sequencer pulse driving the fairly ponderous organ line ever onwards. The underlying pulse slowly resolves into one of the burbling water motifs from 'Aqua', this bringing the whole album just about full circle, before some reverse-enveloped synth sounds snap it to a satisfying conclusion. (Incidentally, some pressings of this CD have the original order of the LP sides transposed for some reason. I recommend playing the tracks in the order they appeared on the black vinyl: 'Aqua', 'Panorphelia', 'NGC891' then 'Upland'. This is by far the most musically satisfying arrangement.)

The disc isn't particularly good value from a playing time point of view-just 45 minutes-and it isn't always of the hi-est of fi but most of the music is of such consistently high standard that it can be recommended without hesitation.

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Spacy!
Definitely a spacy disc from one of the founding members of Tangerine Dream! I bought this when first released around 1973 and liked it immedately. It's kind of similar to Tangerine Dream's "Phaedra" album, so if you like that one, you'll probably like this one as well.