“György Ligeti on tranquilizers” – That’s the catchphrase I’m returning to when I think about or listen to Tangerine Dream’s “Zeit”. There is this celestial quality to the music, but the heavens above are just a cosmos full of black holes. Reaching a black hole’s event horizon time (“Zeit”) stands still and no light escapes from its massive gravitation.
“Zeit” is the sonic equivalent to the dark powers lurking within an already pitch-black and cold universe. Staring into the dark (i.e. listening to the record) one might get a bit bored. But listen closer! Immerse yourself into this ambient space trip and you’ll discover gorgeous vastness! Over the course of nearly 80 minutes there’s a lot of pulsing Nothingness to experience.
Decades later it is still astonishing how much Tangerine Dream made out of such (allegedly) little. This well-crafted bleakness, it’s mesmerizing. Being ahead of its time in 1972 it can easily persist next to any dark ambient artist nowadays – in fact “Zeit” can be seen as a genre defining record for the latter.
I imagine the recording process for that kind of somewhat static music being difficult and exhausting: Sitting in a studio in front of synthesizers, together with Florian Fricke and a gang of cello-players – and there’s one major rule: don’t get frantic with the Instruments/machines, take your time (“Zeit“) and proceed with caution! – And they succeeded masterfully!
Out of all Tangerine Dream records “Zeit” is my favourite one because of its opaque, monolithic quality. It’s a four-sided graceful but callous motherfucker. If you are afraid to encounter that beast – dance to “Phaedra”. “Zeit” doesn’t even need an audience. “Zeit” is and will be there – always.
review by Holger Adam
my copy of “Zeit” is quite old and battered. There’s an ever present surface noise crackle that makes it sound like it’s some ancient relic of older times. Sometimes I like to pretend it’s an ancient 78rpm record from a forgotten culture