Tangerine Dream: Atem (1973)

Atem was the fouth album by Tangerine Dream and their last album for Ohr before signing up to Virgin Records and recording more synthesizer-dominated electronic music. It was also their second album with the lineup of Edgar Froese, Christophe Franke, and Peter Baumann (this lineup would last until 1977).

Atem still finds TD being weird for weird’s sake. By early, pre-Virgin Records standards, this is by far their most accessible album, but even so, it’s still way out there and maybe not for everyone. It’s more accessible because it’s only a single disc with only one side length cut and three cuts on the other side lasting 3-10 minutes (unlike Zeit which was a double album set with only four side length cuts). Also, for the first time, Edgar Froese demonstrates proudly the Mellotron (Froese was a huge Mellotron fan and he said so in interviews).

One of the first things you’ll hear on the opening cut (“Atem”) aside from some strange breathing sounds is Mellotron brass. The first several minutes of this cut consists of Mellotron, synthesizers, and drums, after the climax, the whole thing quiets down for the next 15 minutes consisting of sinister-sounding droning effects. The music, if you call it such, is as sinister as the cover to the album (the baby on the cover is Jerome Froese, Edgar’s son, and a member of Tangerine Dream since about 1989 or 1990).

The next cut, “Fauni-Gena” is mainly 10 minutes of strange jungle sounds and Mellotron, but little else. It sounds a bit like what Edgar Froese did on his second solo album, Ypsilon in Malaysian Pale (1975) but much more experimental, like you expect Tangerine Dream to do around 1971-1973.

“Circulation of Events” is enough to give anyone the creeps. Largely strange droning sounds and more sinister electronic effects. The closing cut, “Wahn” consists largely of a lot of shouting that can be rather startling, before ending with Mellotron.

Atem really amazes me. For years, I simply wrote off Tangerine Dream as generic New Age crap along the lines of John Tesh and Yanni, that’s a big reason why I was a bit hesitant to buy their albums, but once I got a hold of their 1970s albums (figuring anything they did in the 1970s had to be better than what they did in the 1980s and 1990s), I was completely blown away and was as far from that New Age crap as you can get. Atem is truly a recommended album if you want something totally unusual and off-the-wall.