Ricochet (Tangerine Dream album)



Ricochet is the first live album and seventh album overall by German electronic music group Tangerine Dream, released in 1975. It consists of two long compositions mixed from taped recordings of the UK and France portions of their August–October 1975 European Tour. The sound of the album is similar to the group's other "Virgin Years" releases, relying heavily on synthesizers and sequencers to produce a dense ambient soundscape, but is much more energetic than anything they had released previously. Ricochet utilizes more percussion and electronic guitar than its predecessors, Phaedra and Rubycon, bordering on electronic rock. The principal innovation on the album is its use of complex multi-layered rhythms, foreshadowing not only the band's own direction in the 1980s, but also trance music and similar genres of electronic dance music.

Much of the raw material for Ricochet, in particular part 2, was recorded at Fairfield Halls in Croydon, London, during Tangerine Dream's live performance there on 23 October 1975. The original, unedited version of this performance can be heard in set 3 of The Bootleg Box Set Vol. 1. No other source concerts have so far been identified. The piano solo at the beginning of "Ricochet, Part Two" was recorded at the Manor Studio.

After the Top 20 placings for Phaedra and Rubycon, Ricochet fared less well in sales terms, spending just four weeks on the UK album chart (all editions of the now defunct British Hit Albums erroneously state only two), reaching number 40.

In the original release of Ricochet, the sound of two hands clapping can be heard at the beginning of the second track. This was actually the very last tiny bit of applause decay before the music started-probably left in as a then adequate buffer before the start of the piece, on the LP lead-in groove. V-2044.  This sound has been edited out in some of the re-released versions of the album, notably Virgin's 1995 "Definitive Edition" CD release, presumably being regarded as noise.

Personnel

 * Edgar Froese – keyboards, guitar
 * Peter Baumann – keyboards
 * Christopher Franke – keyboards, drums

Singles

 * "Ricochet (Part I)" – "Ricochet (Part II)"
 * "Excerpt From Ricochet"