Tangerine Dream at the Circus, Helsinki, 2019-10-30

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Tangerine Dream at the Circus, Helsinki, 2019-10-30

Post by Tropylium »

Reporting in from Tangerine Dream's first-ever solo concert and second-ever appearence of any kind in Finland! I missed their appearence at the Flow Festival last year, but this was a great first impression.

- POST 1 OF 2: BACKGROUND -

The Circus, despite the name, is a nightclub smack downtown with room for a couple hundred people, not an arena or concert hall of any kind. The place was booked appreciably well. There was one row of seats + tables in the back but most of the crowd was standing. Suits me, I like having some liberty for movement at concerts. No really young people were present, the place doesn't let minors in anyway, but otherwise it was a diverse enough crowd. Outright grey-haired gents and occasional ladies were out in more force than at the average concert though, I'm 34 by now and I got the feeling of still being easily one of the younger fans present. It only took me 20 years as a fan before seeing TD live, for some others it had surely been closer to fifty.

The merch stall had a few vinyls (Quantum Key, Macchu Picchu and Out of This World LPs, and a Record Store Day 12ʺ single I have no recollection of hearing about before), a few concert DVDs, and a slightly larger but still not a huge selection of CDs. Sessions V was not (yet?) available, but I picked up Quantum Gate & Sessions III and IV. From other merch I would've also liked the Zeit T-shirt, but it sold out early, I might get it from the online shop later. Tour, Logo, Wave and Moog shirts were more abundant, I saw quite a few of them in the crowd too, maybe mostly already purchased from last year? Also, the tour programme generously hands out a download code for one free TD album! I have not yet checked out if a specific one or any one.

I chatted a little bit with an old acquaintance who had coincidentally arrived right at the same time as me, and also eavesdropped around a cluster of some Finnish oldschool synth musicians who had of course also arrived for the event (I think at least Otso Pakarinen and Esa Kotilainen, if that says anything).

The opener was a Chinese-American lady called Hiro Kone (edit: not Japanese despite the name). Haven't heard of her before, but it worked well enough (and amusingly kone translates as 'machine' in Finnish). She started off with synth drones and moved eventually on to some heavy and occasionally noisy percussion and sequencer work. Powerful enough, but I could tell she started to run out of repertoire after half an hour, and wrapped up. This left another half an hour to chat and mingle. — Thorsten and Ulrich had done a brief trip thru the crowd back when she was starting, a few people exchanged words with them, I was content with a wave. Also I would've had trouble recognizing Ulrich! he's shaved off the beard he sports in all the recent promo pictures (I hear the beard is launching a solo career instead next year).
Last edited by Tropylium on Thu Oct 31, 2019 11:11 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Tangerine Dream at the Circus, Helsinki, 2019-10-30

Post by Tropylium »

- POST 2 OF 2: THE CONCERT -

About twenty minutes after Hiro Kone had concluded, the text "Tangerine Dream" and their logo appeared on the screen at the back of the stage. The crowd started promptly emptying out from the bar, the smoking rooms, etc. I claimed a place center-stage with some room to jam a bit. After a few more minutes of waiting, TD arrived and commenced with a flood of bass notes, I think partly sampled from the intro of Ricochet. They then built up to a groove that may have been improv roughly built around the bass pattern of "Betrayal". Hoshiko quoted the ending theme of "Cherokee Lane" at a point. A pretty great first track, and their backing video show was at this point one of the most impressive I've ever seen too. After this the band exploded into "Mothers of Rain"; by which I mean: played too loud to really make out much details beyond the absolutely roaring choir & pads presence. I wonder how many people even recognized what they were hearing. A version of "Tangram Solution Part" (i.e. the intro to Tangram Set 1) followed next, more gently but still loud enough to be distorting a little. The buildup was great but, in a slight letdown, ultimately no full conclusion was reached.

A new track or two followed. Newish, anyway, I'm not up to speed on the most recent TD material so I only recognized with certainty the 70s and 80s material played at the concert (probably would've recognized any material up to about Views from a Red Train though). The recent concert videos linked by fgourlot in this forum all seem familiar enough however, and since I'm listening to Quantum Gate for the first time as I write: "Roll the Seven Twice" was definitely played at one point. After these came "Love on a Real Train", a driving mix less chilled than usual, and fading into an ambient mid-set bridge after about forty, fifty minutes of music.

— At this point some comments on their stage setup. On the left, Thorsten had the typical Keyboard Cage arrangement, including e.g. a Memotron in the front rack, and in the back a prominent 16-step analog sequencer (name drop!) with an absolute jungle of jumper cables on it. Hoshiko was standing mid-stage … but only seemed to actually perform anything maybe half of the time, including both violin and some pedal / filter / sampler manipulation, at one point even using the violin as a controller to trigger percussion accents. Plenty of pieces were also performed with relatively little lead melody presence, which seems like a missed chance here: I can think of a lot of classic TD tracks where the main theme could be easily transposed for violin. (Cloudburst Flight, Logos Velvet Part, Going West, Underwater Twilight?) Ulrich, lastly, worked one keyboard and a counter full of of computer workstations and analog minisynths, unusually set up with the monitors facing the audience, hence he had his back on the crowd most of the time really. His contributions seemed the most nebulous to me, I guess stuff like event triggers and general rhythm programming?

There was no definite break though and the band picked speed soon again. The second piece of this half was absolutely breathtaking in a very literal physical way, somehow menacing and uplifting at the same time. Honestly I felt the bass was messing up my heartbeat at one point. It also vaguely reminded me of "Kiew Mission", including even a more ambient second half after the full-out intro; but then not clearly enough for me to actually call it a version of that.

Most of the piece transitions had been fluid so far, but then came an abrupt pivot into "Dolphin Dance" as the most conservatively performed piece of the evening. I think they were having some mixing / equipment issues really, at this point it was clear that all lead lines were being sorta drowned under the rhythm section, and Ulrich was giving a lot of handsigns to tech staff about one amp-looking piece of equipment in particular. Us listeners were having a good enough time still though, me and one lady in front of me (who I think I've seen at EM concerts in Finland before too…) were almost clearing out a mini dancefloor. After some more bridge-level tones TD then rolled out a completely rebuilt version of "Ricochet Part 2" (and with a memorable turn of the laser video show into stark elemental red). Great stuff with thundering rhythms growing gradually more complex. And no going out gently: in the end the piece abruptly dissolved into a blast of synth noise just about inducing an out-of-body experience with the sheer sound pressure. A longish new piece after this, a more gentle but still very rhythmic tune. The main set closed with another rebuilt revision: "Stratosfear", this one quite faithful to the original. Thorsten handled the guitar parts. Video show was again on point too, revisiting the original album cover with bright white outlines. The crowd was clearly feeling it, we had been a mostly reserved audience but this was finally bringing out cheers, fist-pumping, etc. Lastly a brief wind-down towards the end of the main set, I'm not sure if an actual composition or just bridge music. And roaring applause.

Thorsten and Hoshiko returned for an encore quite soon. Hoshiko now took on her most active part in the concert, with what seemed like a violin rendition of "Birth of Liquid Plejades" (with some sampling magic applied to handle a quartet composition all by herself). Thorsten joined in on synths after some minutes as appropriate. I got the impression they were doing a kind of a tribute to Edgar, with some callbacks I think to "Ivory Town" — the sombre ambient solo piece by Edgar that first appeared as a bonus track on the i-Box. Around this point Ulrich finally reappeared too, together with some tech guys, and joining the band after hopefully getting a fix to problems they had been dealing with earlier. The main set had already been two hours, but they went on for a fairly sizable improv session anyway, not quite as long as some others released on the Session EPs but a good half an hour anyway. Some of the older crowd was by now appearing worn-down and started slowly draining out before the end of the concert proper. Most of us still stayed all the way thru though. There were no substantial closing words; just the band introducing each other (Thorsten → Hoshiko → Ulrich → Thorsten) and taking a few deep bows, with kiitos ja hyvää yötä ("thank you and good night" in correct Finnish!) now on the screen. Danke schön auch, it's been a great show! And now to make my way home.
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Re: Tangerine Dream at the Circus, Helsinki, 2019-10-30

Post by sorcerer »

Thanks for taking the time to post that Tropylium, interesting read.

Shame the Sessions discs are delayed, looking forward to same , great series. A wee bit disappointed the video portion is only for PC but hey should still be good.
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Re: Tangerine Dream at the Circus, Helsinki, 2019-10-30

Post by geishaslave »

Thanks Tropylium! Right on brother.
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Re: Tangerine Dream at the Circus, Helsinki, 2019-10-30

Post by 71 dB »

I did not have it in me to go.
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Re: Tangerine Dream at the Circus, Helsinki, 2019-10-30

Post by 71 dB »

I have problems posting here. When I hit "submit" it asks me to sign in again and my post is lost!
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Re: Tangerine Dream at the Circus, Helsinki, 2019-10-30

Post by Insvims »

Thanks for the report, Tropylium! As in Finland, the concert last Sunday in Oslo were their first ever solo concert here. And as in Finland, they played a shorter festival set last year here (I was very happy to attend that one also, which was a great success!).
Much of the same as you say about the Helsinki concert can be said about the Oslo concert. It was just great to finally have them here for a club concert. I noticed no sound problems or other tecnical problems of any sort. Everything went smooth, and the audience seemed for the most part very happy to be there, although I wish more people had shown up. My guess is that it was 400 attendees. Not too bad though. Me and my friends were happy to talk to the band and to Bianca after the concert. They even signed the special concert poster for Oslo for me.
I know that most concerts on this tour have variations in the set lists, but many of the songs are the same. I have posted the complete setlist for the Oslo concert at setlist.fm. And I see that the Helsinki setlist is also posted now.

You can find it here:

Oslo: https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/tangerin ... d7238.html
Helsinki: https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/tangerin ... d147c.html
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Re: Tangerine Dream at the Circus, Helsinki, 2019-10-30

Post by tdfan »

The concert in Stockholm was also brilliant! Nalen is a nice venue. The sound was so much better than last time in Sweden (that was not TD's fault though) and I enjoyed the visuals.
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Re: Tangerine Dream at the Circus, Helsinki, 2019-10-30

Post by Jon »

Insvims wrote:Thanks for the report, Tropylium! As in Finland, the concert last Sunday in Oslo were their first ever solo concert here. And as in Finland, they played a shorter festival set last year here (I was very happy to attend that one also, which was a great success!).
Much of the same as you say about the Helsinki concert can be said about the Oslo concert. It was just great to finally have them here for a club concert. I noticed no sound problems or other tecnical problems of any sort. Everything went smooth, and the audience seemed for the most part very happy to be there, although I wish more people had shown up. My guess is that it was 400 attendees. Not too bad though. Me and my friends were happy to talk to the band and to Bianca after the concert. They even signed the special concert poster for Oslo for me.
I know that most concerts on this tour have variations in the set lists, but many of the songs are the same. I have posted the complete setlist for the Oslo concert at setlist.fm. And I see that the Helsinki setlist is also posted now.

You can find it here:

Oslo: https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/tangerin ... d7238.html
Helsinki: https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/tangerin ... d147c.html

Have you seen any press reports after the Rockefeller gig?
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Re: Tangerine Dream at the Circus, Helsinki, 2019-10-30

Post by Insvims »

Jon wrote:
Insvims wrote:Thanks for the report, Tropylium! As in Finland, the concert last Sunday in Oslo were their first ever solo concert here. And as in Finland, they played a shorter festival set last year here (I was very happy to attend that one also, which was a great success!).
Much of the same as you say about the Helsinki concert can be said about the Oslo concert. It was just great to finally have them here for a club concert. I noticed no sound problems or other tecnical problems of any sort. Everything went smooth, and the audience seemed for the most part very happy to be there, although I wish more people had shown up. My guess is that it was 400 attendees. Not too bad though. Me and my friends were happy to talk to the band and to Bianca after the concert. They even signed the special concert poster for Oslo for me.
I know that most concerts on this tour have variations in the set lists, but many of the songs are the same. I have posted the complete setlist for the Oslo concert at setlist.fm. And I see that the Helsinki setlist is also posted now.

You can find it here:

Oslo: https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/tangerin ... d7238.html
Helsinki: https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/tangerin ... d147c.html

Have you seen any press reports after the Rockefeller gig?
https://www.musikknyheter.no/konserter/ ... eller.html

https://gaffa.no/galleri/bildegalleri-t ... ckefeller/
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