Tangerine Dream

Tangerine Dream have shaped the boundaries of new age and electronic music for over 50 years with their bubbling dreamscapes of synthesizer bliss. The German band’s 100-plus albums and movie soundtracks feature electronic tools in service of deep human feelings and textures as organic as a teeming tropical rain forest. The group’s longtime leader, Edgar Froese, founded Tangerine Dream in West Berlin in 1967, initially using tape loops to make psychedelic experiments. After some reshuffling of the lineup, Christopher Franke and Peter Baumann joined as dedicated members, and their embrace of analog synthesizers and sequencers in the early ’70s helped the trio create immersive atmospheres and vortex-like rhythmic pulsations on albums like 1974’s Phaedra and 1976’s Stratosfear. When Baumann left in 1977, the rest of the band soldiered on through a long run of significant lineup changes—but never lost their boldness or knack for innovation. Some of Tangerine Dream’s most boundary-pushing work appears in movie scores; most notably, the 1984 single “Love on a Real Train” from Risky Business formed the blueprint for ’90s trance with its beatific pads and gentle momentum. Froese died in 2015, but the remaining members stayed together, keeping his spirit alive by incorporating his archival recordings and rough drafts into efforts like the 2022 album Raum.