Tangerine Dream - "Sorcerer" Soundtrack (1977)
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Tangerine Dream - "Sorcerer" Soundtrack
Original Release Date: LP: 1977/CD: 1993 (This version)
Label: LP: MCA-EMI/CD: MCA
[CENSORED]ue #: LP: MCA 2277/CD: MCAD 10842
The German group's lucrative film scoring career began here, one year before Peter Baumann left for a solo career. The trio's eerie electronica was an early inspiration for Sorcerer, director William Friedkin says in the soundtrack's liner notes. If he had known about Tangerine Dream, he says he would have used the group's music for The Exorcist.
Musicians/Performers:
Edgar Froese: Fender Stratocaster & Gibson Les Paul Custon Guitars, Twin Keyboard Mellotron Mark V, Steinway Grand Piano, Oberheim Polyphonic Synthesizer, Arp Omni String Synthesizer, PPG Synthesizer, Modified Moog Synthesizer
Christopher Franke: Moog Modular Synthesizer, Projekt Elektronik Sequencer, Computerstudio Digital Sequencer, Mellotron, Arp Soloist Synthesizer, Elka String Synthesizer, Oberheim Sequencer
Peter Baumann: Projekt Elektronik Modular Synthesizer, Projekt Elektronik Sequencer, Fender Rhodes Piano, Arp Soloist Synthesizer, Mellotron
Tracklist:
1. Main Title
2. Search
3. The Call
4. Creation
5. Vengeance
6. The Journey
7. Grind
8. Rain Forest
9. Abyss
10. The Mountain Road
11. Impressions Of Sorcerer
12. Betrayal (Sorcerer Theme)
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Info & Reviews...
From --->>> http://www.vitn.homepage.t-online.de/sorcerer.htm
After the European tour in 1976 Tangerine Dream started to work on a soundtrack for William Friedkin, the director of "The French Connection" and "The Exorcist". Sorcerer was a remake of Clouzot's "The Wages Of Fear" from 1953 about a risky truck transport, featuring now Roy Scheider, Bruno Cremer, Francisco Rabal, Amidou and Ramon Bieri. William Friedkin had decided to make a film around whatever music TD would produce.
William Friedkin about the movie and the music: "I first heard Tangerine Dream while in Munich for the opening of 'The Exorcist'. Had I heard them sooner I would have asked them to score that film. A year later, we met in Paris. I told them the story of the film and gave them a script. It took more than two years to make Sorcerer. One day in the middle of a primeval forest in the Dominican Republic, about six months into shooting, a tape arrived from the Dream, containing ninety minutes of musical impressions. It is from this tape that the film has been scored, though the musicians had not then nor even now as this is written seen any of the footage. Yet somehow they were able to capture and enhance every nuance of each moment where the music is heard. The film and the score are inseparable."
Though the film was no great success, the soundtrack went Top 25 in the UK charts and was a milestone in TD's future career as film composers. Fans had to wait nearly 16 years to get a CD release of the soundtrack. Finally, after several delays, it was released in early 1993.
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From --->>> http://www.progreviews.com/reviews/display.php?rev=td-sor
Tangerine Dream's first movie soundtrack was for Sorcerer, a film directed by William Friedkin. This was a remake of Henri-Georges Clouzot's Le Salaire de la Peur (or Wages of Fear), a classic nail-biter in which four men enlist to drive two truckloads of nitroglycerine across treacherous terrain, including, as can be seen from the cover, a less-than-fortified bridge. Sorcerer would turn out to be Friedkin's first major bomb, though over time the film has garnered more favorable reappraisal.
Friedkin was already familiar with another member of the Virgin Records roster, Mike Oldfield, having used the main theme of Tubular Bells for his previous film The Exorcist. Friedkin met Tangerine Dream and gave them script for Sorcerer. They responded by mailing him ninety minutes of music while he was filming, all created without having seen any of the actual footage of the movie. Friedkin remains laudatory: "The film and the score are inseparable."
Though released a year after Stratosfear, musically this score falls prior to it, without the upgraded sequencing gear that seems to be present on some of that album's work. Rather, Sorcerer works as a summation of the ideas that had come from the Phaedra-Ricochet sequence. Perfectly complemented by a terrific picture of the trio with glowering stares in half-silhouette (Baumann looks especially evil), the band shows they are not afraid to roll up their sleeves and get a little dirty and textural once again. The "Main Title" makes an incredible start. For my money, it is probably the most compelling music the band had presented for several albums. Opening with an electronic wind and echoing, and continuing onwards with low buzzing and throbbing, this track marks a welcome return to the quality of their earlier, experimental material, particularly Phaedra: a wailing wall of dark sound evoking the wild nature of the terrain. "Rain Forest" gives off a foreboding mood as well, with a pulsing bass riff and a synthesizer that sc[CENSORED]s in upwards movements like the patter of insects. The opening of "Abyss" also builds impressively in atmosphere with backwards and phasing effects, before launching into a hallucinogenic blur of Phaedrian string mellotron.
Other tracks lean toward the more repetitive-melodic, accessible approach of the albums that immediately preceded this soundtrack. Examples of these include "Search," the Bolero-like slow march of "Vengeance," the heroic theme of "Grind," and "Betrayal." While many tracks are nothing really new, the only one that sounded lesser to me was the "Impressions of 'Sorcerer'" track, where the band goes for a funkiness that comes off a little stiff, with Froese's guitar soloing, something of which I've never really been taken.
Overall a good effort, and the best tracks on here like the opening one and "Abyss" are high grade TD. My guess is fans of the Baumann-era lineup will probably end up having this one sooner or later in any case.
review by Joe McGlinchey
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From --->>> http://starling.rinet.ru/music/tanger.htm#Sorcerer
SORCERER ***
Year Of Release: 1977
William Friedkin had used the talents of Mike Oldfield for Exorcist; now he turns to the talents of Tangerine Dream for Sorcerer. Actually, that was the 'third project' I was speaking of when I said 1975 was the year of the grand "trifurcation" of the band onto studio albums, live records, and soundtracks; most of the music on this album had been written as early as then, but only came out two years later together with the film.
Information on the movie - I haven't seen it, but it's said to be a remake of Henri-Georges Clouzot's 'Salaire De La Peur' ('Wages Of Fear'), based on Georges Arnaud's thriller about four men bravely driving nytroglycerine-filled trucks in the jungles of South America and what came out of it. Frankly speaking, I'm not sure if calling on Tangerine Dream to provide the soundtrack to that stuff was a right idea; listening to the record, I get anything BUT the impression of four guys driving four trucks into darkness and despair. What I really get is more of an impression that the actual title would provide - that is, a mystical and magical atmosphere, as if there were real sorcerers around, you know. But maybe that's what actually helps one digest Sorcerer as more of a full-fledged Tangerine Dream album than just a secondary soundtrack. Because, well, it is full-fledged and quite full-shaped at that, too.
I mean, isn't it some sort of a cliche that Tangerine Dream are a band made for soundtracks? After all those years of being compared to Pink Floyd, too... Not that I really enjoy Sorcerer. It is actually very striking, after all those years, to hear a T.D. album with as much as twelve tracks on it. Twelve - that's almost as much as the number of all the tracks they put out in their pre-Virgin period. But then again, somehow it doesn't work quite that well: abandoning the "lengthy suite" principle seriously relieves the tension, and just as you're ready to hear a certain theme expand into something bigger than it had been for the last two or three minutes, it simply goes away and it's like 'Uh? What the...'. And then the same trick repeats for several times.
That said, Sorcerer certainly isn't bad; it's the first time Tangerine Dream go for a certain 'evil thrill' of their own, and the music on here is denser, darker, far more ominous than just about everything released previously... remember, all the "cosmic-sounding" music is supposed to be of a 'neutral' kind, more of a cold majestic reverence-inducing thing than of an utterly beautiful/gorgeous panorama. (Which can actually help you get an idea of why Yes are so often called 'sissies' even among those who do not have an alergy on prog-rock: they take the Heaven and the Skies and instead of treating them 'realistically', with 'cold neutrality', on an 'objective' basis, turn them into 'La-La land', at least on albums like Close To The Edge and TFTO). This is not the case with Sorcerer: the music on here places the emphasis on 'evil' and 'somber', so that the more impressive souls will probably want to run and hide.
This atmosphere is set right from the very beginning, with those grim synthesizer lines that resemble flying airplanes crossed with industrial noises - the 'Main Theme' isn't even a "theme", it's just a bunch of hellish noises of an obviously apocalyptic nature. Vangelis would be proud of these guys. When the actual music begins, it rarely sounds so scary and nightmarish, but it's never optimistic or bright. The very second track is it - 'Search' establishes a murky industrial loop instead of the by now trademark "astral synth-bop", and Froese overdubs a few suicide-inducing guitar solos that are, I'd say, melancholic and pessimistic rather than straightforward in their evilness, but that don't help none.
There's no need concentrating on most of the individual tracks - their atmospheres are totally alike, and the melodies or quasi-melodies don't differ enough for me to able to describe or rationalize these differences - but maybe a thing like 'Rainy Forest' should be mentioned, where the truck race is illustrated by a truly mad set of loops and looney piano outbursts in the background as if to symbolize total paranoia. Also noteworthy is the sveen-minute long 'Abyss', the closest thing to a 'suite' on here, going from eerie-sounding synth growls to phased Mellotrons to God knows what else. Any Tangerine Dream lover should own this track.
Any T.D. lover, in fact, should have this album: I'm not asking everybody to acquire all the eighty million soundtracks the band had hotcaked out in its prime, not to mention past its prime, but this first one is pretty important for them, not only as a different career move at the time, but also for reasons I have mentioned previously. It's EVIL! And what normal good-willing guy would refuse to hear an EVIL album?
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From --->>> http://www.progarchives.com/album.asp?id=6388
TANGERINE DREAM's first foray in to film scoring. This was the soundtrack to William Friedkin's Sorcerer, which was a remake of an old movie called Wages of Fear. Apparently Friedkin was a big fan of prog rock and electronic music and had he knew of TANGERINE DREAM back in 1973, he would have used them for his best-known film, The Exorcist, but instead he used MIKE OLDFIELD, whose "Tubular Bells" gave him wide exposure, no doubt helped by the beginning part of the album used for the film.
I had seen Sorcerer, and I thought it was a particularly boring film, the only thing really sticking out was the heavy monsoons pouring in the Central American jungle as these trucks haul explosives over dangerous territory.
Given this was a soundtrack, the band went for much shorter compositions, in the 2-3 minute range, for the most part, but it proved TANGERINE DREAM was still able to float within the time constraints. No side-length epics here. "Main Title" is a truly bizarre experimental piece that harkens back to the old stuff they did when they were with Ohr, only this time on synthesizers rather than glissando guitars and VCS-3 synth effects. Most of the rest relies on sequencers with lots of synthesizers and Mellotron. Some of them sound like unfinished pieces, but worked in context to the film. After watching the film, I discovered only about half of the album's 12 songs were used in the film. I understand the band was less than pleased how their music was used in the film, but then the band never saw the film when they did the soundtrack.
I wouldn't call this their best '70s effort, but at least it's still a lot better than the crap they've been giving us in the last 20 or so years.
