Tangerine Dream – Cyclone

#TangerineDreamTuesday Week 10: CYCLONE.

And now for something completely different ... for the first time in their catalogue, a Tangerine Dream album with vocals!

Enter: Steve Jolliffe and Klaus Krüger. Having briefly ed TD in 1969, Jolliffe was re-invited to the band for a single outing, adding his vocals, lyrics, flute and several other instruments. Krüger meanwhile provides the album's percussive backbone: a strict, almost motorik beat in places.

Cyclone has always been the black sheep of Tangerine Dream's Virgin Years, both in its unique vocals and its controversial fan perception. Time certainly hasn't helped it in this regard; future albums would remain purely instrumental (with some exceptions), making Cyclone a musical cul-de-sac rather than TD's next leap forward. Froese himself was unimpressed with the results, and no contribution was added to their era-encoming compilation Dream Sequence in 1985.

The music itself is perfectly fine, although given the sterling quality of TD albums preceding, this makes it an unfortunate step down. Side A is dominated by Jolliffe's contributions; his proggy vocals and abstract lyrics have warmed on me tremendously. (They're far superior to the ill-conceived Tyger from 1987, for example.) I actually think this album's weakest track might be Madrigal Meridian, the instrumental which takes up all of Side B - without Baumann's influence, it lacks the tension that underlies TD's previous epics, instead providing a chain of repetitive and slightly aimless solos. It's a far cry from what Froese/Franke/Krüger will achieve on their next album together...

Cyclone is definitely an album that causes some dissention among fans. Whether you are a prog rock fan or more of a Berlin School fan will have you disliking the other. For some. I actually think 'Bent Cold Sidewalk' is the best full song on the album and I like Berlin School more than Prog Rock. I do like 'Madrigal Meridian' though. Especially the last 5 minutes. While Steve's vocal edition might rub some people the wrong way, I actually find the flute to be the more odd addition to the TD prog rock side (However it works great with the last 5 minutes of Meridian). I still think this album is a worthy edition to your TD collection and not just because you are completist of the Virgin years like I was.

I was lucky enough to see Cyclone performed live at Portsmouth Guildhall in 1978 (I still have the programme somewhere). I was only 13 and it was my first ever show. There is something about Cyclone that hits the spot for me. I have a fair collection of TD vinyl but there's something about that one that keeps drawing me back to it. Maybe it is Steve Joliffe's vocals...

Over the years I've come around to liking this album, though I never felt TD music as needing lyrics.

Jolliffe's lyrics and voice suit the music, but I have always remained unconvinced by the drumming. Its too #structured#. It doesn't really fit.
The B side Madrigal Meridian is a pretty standard longer piece in the vein of Stratosfear and Force Majeure.

Of course they'd come a fair way since the great classics of Phaedra, Rubycon and Ricochet (the three albums I always go back to). These will never be sured in the TD canon, but I'll avoid any arguments as to whether they are equals to Klaus Schulze's output of about the time period....

I've often wondered why they wobbled off on this strange tangent for one album, and listening to the Tangerine Tree and Leaves performances of the period, its hard to understand.

My collection has been digital for about twenty years, but I did own many first pressings of their works.

My favorite album by TD. Still have my 1978s first german pressing. Although the record is over 40 years old, nothing is crackling. The CD would probably have decomposed long ago. ;-)

Believe it or not,this is my favourite TD album. Some stunning playing throughout.....and yes,I like the vocals.

I always felt that Cylone has an undeserved bad reputation. At this time, Peter Baumann was gone, to release a couple of solo albums in the early '80s, Trans-Harmonic Nights (1979, actually, although close enough to the 1980s) and Repeat Repeat in 1981, and then starting up Private Music (in which his former band Tangerine Dream ended up signed to). Steve Jolliffe and drummer Klaus Krieger came in. Jolliffe was apparently in a very early Tangerine Dream incarnation around 1968, before jumping ship for Steamhammer, a British blues-rock band. He provides wind instruments as well as vocals. It's the vocals that so many people really dislike of this album. But if the results mean the band moved more towards prog rock, to me that's nothing to complain about! "Bent Cold Sidewalk" is prime example what I'm talking about. It sounds like late '70s prog rock, but the piece does also feature their trademark use of sequencers to let you know what band you're listening to. "Rising Runner Missed by Endless Sender" is a more upbeat number, with nice spacy synths and vocals, once again. "Madrigal Meridian" is the only all-instrumental piece, and features a lot of Klaus Krieger's drumming. While his drumming might sound like it's on autopilot for most of the time, at least the nice synth rhythms more than make up for it. Just give it a try, you might end up surprised.