In the late 60s and early 70s, several short-lived incarnations of Tangerine Dream were formed by Froese teaming up with various musicians from West Berlin's underground scene. A few of these collaborators included Steve Jolliffe, Klaus Schulze and Conrad Schnitzler.
The most notable of Froese's collaborations ended up being his partnership with Christopher Franke. Franke joined Tangerine Dream in 1970 to replace Schulze as the drummer, and eventually (together with Peter Baumann, whose sequencer work is often mislabelled as 'all' Franke's work) became Tangerine Dream's sequencer guru and was responsible for some of the pulsing rhythmic synthesizer lines that came to define the band's music. Franke left Tangerine Dream over creative differences with Froese nearly two decades later in 1987.
The first Tangerine Dream album, Electronic Meditation, was a tape-collage Krautrock piece, using the technology of the time rather than the synthesized music they later became famous for, and was a collaboration between Froese, Klaus Schulze, and Conrad Schnitzler. Electronic Meditation was published by Ohr in 1970, and began the period known as the Pink Years (the Ohr logo was a pink ear). But starting with their second album, Alpha Centauri, the group has been a trio or occasionally duo of electronic instruments, commonly augmented by guitar from Froese (or, much later, other musicians as well), and occasionally also other instruments. Of these, drums from Chris Franke and organ from Steve Schroyder (on Alpha Centauri) or Peter Baumann (on subsequent releases) feature prominently in the band's music during the early 70s.
In the 1980s, along with other electronic music pioneers such as Jean Michel Jarre and Vangelis, the band were early adopters of the new digital technology which revolutionized the sound of the synthesiser. Their technical competence and extensive experience in their early years with self-made instruments and unusual means of creating sounds meant that they were able to exploit this new technology to make music quite unlike anything heard before. To the modern listener, their albums of that period may not seem so exceptional, but only because the technology they adopted at that time is now used almost universally.
Although Tangerine Dream began initially as a surreal rock band, each of the members contributed different things. Edgar Froese's guitar style was inspired by Jimi Hendrix [2], while Chris Franke contributed the more avant garde elements of Stockhausen and Terry Riley. Yes-like influence was brought in by Steve Joliffe on Cyclone.
Some of the more famous soundtracks have been Sorcerer, The Keep, Risky Business, and Legend. At their best, the soundtracks have been as musically successful as the regular studio albums, and many fans discovered them through their film or television work.
Clips:
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