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Tangerine Dream — 50 Years of Phaedra - At the Barbican
(Kscope 3048, 2025, 2CD / 3LP / DL)

by Jon Davis, Published 2026-05-16

50 Years of Phaedra - At the Barbican Cover art

You’d be hard pressed to find anyone with a knowledge of electronic music who would not say that Tangerine Dream’s Phaedra was a landmark album. When it came out in 1974, the use of sequencers showed a new way to craft music with synthesizers, and they held on to the venerable Mellotron for its distinctive atmospheres. Edgar Froese, Christopher Franke, and Peter Baumann created something that was not just ground-breaking, but also eerily beautiful and full of human emotion. Froese, Franke, and Baumann may not be associated with Tangerine Dream any longer, but the current incarnation of the ground convened at The Barbican in London on 7 October 2024 to pay homage to the classic album. Thorsten Quaeschning, Hoshiko Yamane, and Paul Frick used many of the same kinds of instruments as the original group did, but they didn’t just play through the album in order — at least the tracks are not presented in that order. "Mysterious Semblance at the Strand of Nightmares,” “Movements of a Visionary,” “Sequent C',” and the title track are all present in some form, along with a wealth of other material. I’ll admit to some confusion about what exactly is present, as the credits I got were not especially informative. It appears that the double CD version features the concert’s two sets on the two discs, with the first consisting of the Phaedra tracks plus the eight-part suite called “Hyppolytos Session.” One thing that’s mentioned in the promotional materials is that while the original album was recorded at a time when hardware sequencing was somewhat primitive, resulting in some of the sequences drifting out of time with each other, the new version corrects those errors and syncs everything together using current technology. To my ears, this doesn’t result in any loss of interest. These are just new versions of the pieces that have their own worth as music. The second set features live versions of TD tracks from throughout the decades, from “Sorcerer Theme” in the 70s through several 80s tracks to four off of Raum (2022). There’s also another version of “Phaedra” which is different from the one in the first set. So how to sum up 50 Years of Phaedra? Certainly, for anyone unfamiliar with the original album, I would recommend checking that out first. My situation is that of a fan who discovered them in the 70s but didn’t keep up with their work in the 80s and beyond, and my feeling is that the live versions of the 80s tracks are better then the originals. The new material is good, but doesn’t add anything new to the Tangerine Dream legacy.

Filed under: New releases, 2025 releases

Related artist(s): Tangerine Dream

More info
http://www.tangerinedreammusic.com/en/music/detail.asp?id=274&tit=50+Years+of+Phaedra%3A+At+The+Barbican

 

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