Thorsten Quaeschning

Originally formed in 1967 by Edgar Froese, Tangerine Dream have released over 170 albums, composed music scores for more than 20 films, composed 35 hours of music for the game “Grand Theft Auto V”, are still touring strong and have just released a 50th Anniversary Box set.  Famed for their ambient and electronic sound, they have been profoundly influential in the development of Electronic Dance Music since the early 1970’s.

The current members of the band featuring Thorsten Quaeschning (who was Froese’s chosen successor and took over the leadership of the band after his death in 2015), Hoshiki Yamane and Paul Frick recently performed at La Rambleta in Valencia. It’s been six years since the band last performed here and they did not disappoint the capacity crowd!

As with all Tangerine Dream events, the stage visuals and creative set up complemented the music perfectly. Kicking off with the stunningly ambient “Sorcerer Theme” from 1974, they performed a time spanning set which finished with “No Happy Ending” from 2013.  The following encore was pure musical genius – the band having used physics to work out the resonant note of the room and performing a live session in that musical key!

Tangerine Dream are one of those band that have crossed generations, remained true to their musical beliefs and are seemingly unstoppable!

5 Minutes with Thorsten Quaeschning

Welcome to Valencia, it’s been a while since you were last here. How is it all going?

It feels great to be honest. The band has a long history – 57 years and it’s an honour to be part of the progress of Tangerine Dream. I have been part of this for 22 years now, it feels longer!  We are very happy to tour the world and happy that people want to come and see us. This is our second concert this year – last year we toured a little and the year we played our biggest tour ever with 67 concerts in one year!

Its great to be back in Valencia, last time we played here was 2019, so six years ago. It’s great to play Spain, the Spanish audience are always very active and interested in music and what we do. To have fans from the 70’s, 80’s, 90’s and because of us producing the tracks for “Grand Theft Auto 5” we now have a new younger audience as well.  Also, with Netflix series like “Stranger Things” and “Black Mirror” using the music it is really exciting to reach new and old fans and still be part of the game.

I have seen the setlist for tonight and it looks fantastic. I also understand you have something a little special planned for the encore.

A normal concert these days is that we play a main set with existing tracks from across the albums from 1974 onwards. Tracks from before then were not meant to be recreated, it was more music from the moment and very ambient. We stop in 1986 and skips the 90´s for personal taste reasons and then finish with music from the last albums. After that we play the music band game, where we leave the stage and get people to clap before we come back out!

The we come back out and play a session. I don’t like the term improv session – it’s too jazz music related and makes me think of scale playing. So, this is more music of the moment, and it’s based on physics. We work out the distance to the back wall and the ceiling and then which tempo the bass drum is pumping the room, and we are also looking for the resonant note of the room, to make the room shake. So, if the concert hall resonates in F, we will play the session in F. We like to play around with this and have some metal shaking in the room! The only constraint on how long we play for is dependent on the curfew of the venue!

Words and photo: Rhyan Paul