Tangerine Dream - Rockface [live 2CD] (1988/2003)

×

Tangerine Dream - Rockface [live 2CD] (1988/2003)

Close

Tangerine Dream - Rockface | (r)1988 | (p)2003 | Electronic
MP3 | CBR 192 kbp/s | FhG | Time: 107:23 | Size: 154Mb

In late 2003 TD surprised their fans with the announcement of Rockface, a live recording from the 1988 North America tour. The double album was finally released on December 18th, 2003 and features a virtually untouched soundboard recording of the third-last gig of that tour, recorded in Berkeley/San Francisco.

After several bootlegs and fan releases this album is the first official recording from that tour featuring the short-time line-up Froese/Haslinger/Wadephul. The sound quality is excellent for a live album, though not always studio standard. One minor flaw is the missing of about three minutes of music on the first disc (according to official information from TDI the sound engineer had to change tapes at that moment). The missing part is located in the midst of the track Parabola and consists of unreleased music very reminiscent of the composition I Hear You Now by Jon & Vangelis. Anyway the music is mixed quite well, so the missing part can be hardly noticed if the listener cannot compare the music to other fan or bootleg recordings of the same tour.

For a large part, the music material consists of compositions from the album Optical Race (1988) which is understandable as the tour was performed to promote that first album on TD's new US-based label Private Music (owned by ex-member Peter Baumann at that time). On the other hand there are adaptions of some TD classics from Phaedra (1974) and Logos Live (1982), some tracks from forthcoming soundtrack albums like Miracle Mile, Destination Berlin (both 1989) and Canyon Dreams (1991) as well as a handful of new compositions that are not featured on any studio or soundtrack album. Thus, fans who like Tangerine Dream's music of the late eighties will find this album highly enjoyable.

There is hardly any Tangerine Dream release without an error in the track listing or the liner notes. On this release the liner notes say "This concert was recorded during the band's North American tour in June/July 1988" which is obviously wrong, as the tour took place between August 25th and September 28th.

This is the first release of a series of complete, untouched live concerts taken from Tangerine Dream's vaults which has been continued in 2004 and 2005 with the releases of East, Arizona Live, and, Vault IV.