Tangerine Dream at the Circus, Helsinki, 2019-10-30
Posted: Thu Oct 31, 2019 5:35 pm
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).
- 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).