For Richard: TD playing at the Chicester Festival in 1974:

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Oedipus Tyrannus at the Chichester Festival

TANGERINE DREAM

People were queuing out­side the Chichester Festi­val Theatre all day for return tickets, and they'd come from all over the country on the off ­chance. But tough, because no ­one was about to surrender a rare chance to hear Tangerine Dream Playing their second live gig in the country in the place where they have provided the music for Keith Michell's “Oedipus Tyrannus.”

The lucky 1,500 who got in were rewarded by a much more varied programme than Dream gave in London the last time they were here, and one which should give the lie, once and for all, to the slander that writes this band off as a solemn trio of purveyors of electronic Muzak.

Each of the four items played had its own quite distinct character. The first, which moved very quickly from its gentle opening statement to violent turmoil and a series of almost grandiose washes of sound which were reminiscent of Elgar rather than the Debussy preludes which, some­how, their chromaticism always tends to remind me.

The second, beginning with percussive splashes of sound in many ways similar to the work of Edgar Froese on his solo album "Aqua," was more agonized in its development, al­though I enjoyed it rather less than the first.

The third, in which all three of them kept on keyboards throughout, was my favourite, showing that whatever you may think about their manipulations of their VCS 3s and the vast Moog which dominated the back of the stage like an astronaut's control panel, as keyboard men they are really supreme.

For their encore, lasting 25 minutes they concentrated on synthesizers with some inter­esting work by Froese on Mellotron In what was one of their most rhythmic pieces, with definite 6/8 pulse throughout. - Karl DALLAS.