Edgar Froese obituary

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/jan/27/edgar-froese-obituary

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Edgar Froese, who has died aged 70, was the founder and mastermind of the Berlin-based band Tangerine Dream, a prolific solo artist, and one of the most influential pioneers of electronic music. That term, however, was one that Froese rejected. “We don’t like what we do to be called ‘electronic music’,” he insisted. “We are people making music, not machines. We are writing songs and compositions and then translate them with synthesizers ... but also other instruments.”

This philosophy would enable Tangerine Dream to encompass various kinds of classical, avant-garde and minimalist influences within their music as well as heavy rock and ambient atmospheres, and it set Froese and Tangerine Dream apart from other “Krautrock” bands such as Neu! or Kraftwerk, whose so-called “motorik” beats emphasised machine-like repetition. Froese’s versatility and artistic inquisitiveness drove Tangerine Dream to create more than 100 studio albums; his catalogue of more than 20 solo albums included Macula Transfer (1976), Stuntman (1979), Kamikaze 1989) and the four-volume series Ambient Highway (2003).

After scoring William Friedkin’s 1977 thriller Sorcerer, Tangerine Dream pursued a parallel career as creators of movie soundtracks, working on titles including Michael Mann’s Thief (1981), the Tom Cruise vehicle Risky Business (1983), Firestarter (1984), Legend (1985) and Miracle Mile (1988). In 2013, Froese and Tangerine Dream were major contributors to the soundtrack of the computer game Grand Theft Auto V.

Froese was born in Tilsit in East Prussia (now the Russian city of Sovetsk) on the day allied forces landed in Normandy. His father was killed in the war and Edgar’s mother moved the family to West Berlin. Edgar began taking piano lessons when he was 12 and later started playing the guitar, before enrolling at West Berlin’s Academy of the Arts, where he studied painting and sculpture. “Even today I still try to express myself by painting a lot and working on computer graphics,” he told the online magazine the Quietus in 2010.

In 1965 he formed a band called the Ones, a band that played at parties thrown by Salvador Dalí at his house in Cadaqués, Spain. The art-minded Froese felt inspired by Dalí’s ethos of “being as original and authentic as possible”, although his then bandmates didn’t share his vision. The Ones managed to release one single, Lady Greengrass / Love of Mine, before disbanding in 1967. Froese then assembled the first incarnation of Tangerine Dream. Initially, the group found themselves trying to emulate the superstars of Anglo-American rock music, such as Eric Clapton or Jimi Hendrix, before it dawned on Froese that they needed to find a way to express their own background and experiences. “The Germans have no roots in rock music,” he said. “We didn’t have the attitude for rock’n’roll, the blues and so on.”

Their 1969 debut album, Electronic Meditation, featured Froese alongside the drummer Klaus Schulze and the guitarist/cellist Conrad Schnitzler. It had been hastily recorded during rehearsals, but its spacey, improvisational sound, somewhat inspired by Pink Floyd, won them a deal with the German label Ohr.

The albums Alpha Centauri (1971), Zeit (1972) and Atem (1973) followed, the band going through several lineup changes even as their music explored a fascinating sonic palette, from diaphanous tonal washes to booming pagan rhythms. They also made a decisive move away from conventional rock instruments to new-fangled synthesizer technology. They began experimenting with sine-wave generators and inventing their own idiosyncratic sounds, though this radical approach prompted angry responses from audiences and critics. Froese recalled how somebody threw a plastic bag full of marmalade at the instruments at a gig in Paris, disabling the equipment.

However, hefty quantities of imported copies of Tangerine Dream’s albums were being bought by mail order from Virgin Records, in part because of radio support from the DJ John Peel, who made Atem his Album of the Year for 1973. When the group had a falling-out with Ohr, Virgin snapped them up and released the album Phaedra in 1974 – the band now comprising Froese, the keyboardist Peter Baumann and the drummer/keyboardist Chris Franke. Its hypnotic mix of ebbing and flowing rhythmic patterns, swirling effects and sudden melodious eruptions made it an instant classic. It reached No 15 in the UK charts and was certified gold in seven countries, although it was notably unsuccessful in Germany.

It was the beginning of a steady streak of success for the group, with albums that included Rubycon (1975) and Stratosfear (1976). Later work such as Force Majeure (1979) and Tangram (1980) found them moving towards a heavier, progressive rock-influenced sound. Their sound subsequently veered towards a more New Age style before exploring new directions in electronica during the 1990s and 2000s.

It was thanks to the enthusiasm of Friedkin that Tangerine Dream developed a second life as soundtrack composers. Friedkin first heard the group while he was in Munich for the opening of his 1973 film The Exorcist, after which he gave them a script for his upcoming movie Sorcerer (1977). Friedkin recalled how he was filming “in the middle of a primeval forest in the Dominican Republic” when a tape of music arrived from the band. This became the score of Sorcerer, despite the fact that the musicians had not glimpsed a single frame of the film. It was Tangerine Dream’s first effort at film music, but they found it came naturally and it was a path they pursued into the new millennium.

Froese’s solo work continued alongside Tangerine Dream, although the lines between them were often blurred. The band’s box sets Tangents (1973) and I-Box (2000) contained quantities of solo Froese material, and the albums Summer in Nagasaki (2007) and Winter in Hiroshima (2009) were billed as Tangerine Dream albums but were, in effect, Froese solo efforts. He also re-recorded several early Tangerine Dream albums as solo works.

The band’s live performances became increasingly rare in recent years, though they played selected European dates in 2007 to mark the group’s 40th anniversary, including one at the Astoria in central London. Their show at the Royal Albert Hall on 1 April 2010 was billed as the Zeitgeist concert, and was captured on a three-CD live album. The Electric Mandarine Tour 2012 took the band to Europe and North America, and they performed in Melbourne, Australia, in November that year.

Froese, a vegetarian who eschewed drugs, tobacco and alcohol, had recently finished his autobiography, Tangerine Dream: Force Majeure, 1967-2014, to be published later this year.

His first wife, Monique, whom he married in 1974, was an artist and photographer who created sleeve artwork for many of Tangerine Dream’s early albums. She died in 2000.

He is survived by his second wife, the artist and musician Bianca Acquaye, and his son from his first marriage, Jerome, who played from 1990 to 2006 with Tangerine Dream.

• Edgar Willmar Froese, musician, composer and artist, born 6 June 1944; died 20 January 2015