Misplaced Pages

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 140.178.167.168 (talk) at 18:58, 28 October 2005 (→Berlin School of electronic music). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Berlin School of electronic music

A development of electronic music in the 1970's characterized by soaring, improvised electric guitar or synthesizer melodies in high-register accompanied by a complex, ever-shifting, sequencer bass ostinato. Sound effects such as wind, and washes of Mellotron choir, flute, or strings were often added for color. Berlin School tracks typically ran about twenty or thirty minutes, filling one side of a vinyl LP. An outgrowth of Krautrock, Berlin School was so-named because most of its early practitioners were based out of Berlin, Germany, and to differentiate it from the more pop-oriented Dusseldorf School which included Kraftwerk.

Although sequencers were used by Pete Townsend on The Who's "Baba O'Reilly" in 1971 and by Pink Floyd on 1973's Dark Side of the Moon. the classic era of Berlin School commenced with the release of Phaedra by Tangerine Dream in 1974, their first on the Virgin label, and closed with Hyperboria by the same group in 1983. Side one of Moondawn by Klaus Schulze in 1976 was his first entry in this genre, joined by Jean-Michel Jarre with Oxygene in the same year, Ashra's "New Age of Earth" and Michael Hoenig's Departure from the Northern Wasteland, and Vangelis's Spiral in 1977.

By 1984 Tangerine Dream had exhausted most of the possibilites of this genre and began to record albums with shorter, more accessible "new age" tracks such as Le Parc and Underwater Sunlight. However, in 1986 they released Green Desert which they had recorded in 1973 and left on the shelf. It contained the track "Astral Voyager" which was tentative Berlin School in the vein of "Convention of the 24" from TD's White Eagle LP. Green Desert therefore was the first Berlin School recording.

In 1988, five years after Tangerine Dream left Virgin Records, Wavestar released their acclaimed Moonwind, perhaps the apex of the genre. The clean picked-bass and synthesizer trills of "Chase the Evening" distilled the Berlin sound to its essence.