Studio album. Originally recorded during TD's US tour in 1988 by Edgar Froese and short time member Ralf Wadephul. Additional recordings in 2006 by both musicians.
The inner side of the 2-page front insert says: "The material of this album was composed during Tangerine Dream's North American tour back in August/September 1988. Weeks after weeks in tourbusses, planes, hotels and various locations gave the two guys here the opportunity to get musically into something different off stage. The plan was to release the stuff as an on and off the road album later in the year. The road feeling as well as the summertime in the states had been a strong influence for these compositions. The album was completed while hanging out after the tour at a friend's place in LA. Because of various reasons the album had a delay for over about seventeen years before it now will be presented to the public."
On his homepage Ralf Wadephul writes about the making of Blue Dawn: "After many years I got a call from Edgar asking if I would be interested in collaborating again on a studio project regarding unfinished sketches from off days during the 1988 US tour. I guess he had already in mind to release the material under specific circumstances. But how could it work? After the split I continued working for years in the same field of music. So I started digging into my library of various work in order to find some 88 stuff. After weeks I found these tapes on one of my hard disk. The result sounded very much 'tourlike' so I had to give it quite a bit of polish treatments as well as adding some newer sounds. But it wasn't too different from the old TD tracks back then. At the same time Edgar did the same to some of his older 'tourlike' material. One of TD's technicians knew a way of cleaning up the stuff with some special technical treatments -- thanks Christian! So we met in Vienna in 2005 to check all the material -- and what a surprise, most of the music did merge together so smoothly, that it didn't take more than two weeks to complete the record. And it was there -- the phatt and powerful old analogue sound! But before finishing work, we had to make the decision: leaving the tracks as they are or adding something? Should we change sounds? Should the stuff being remixed? Would it violate the composition if we change it? Finally we've felt that the old versions were uncompleted and so we decided to give the music some of these extra colours which definitely would bring it up to a better level. We just wanted to do it right! After all these years, I still love Sun Gate and Edgar's guitar. So I asked him to play guitar on some of my tracks and I think it was a good idea! And, of course there has been much more 'sketchy' stuff from that tour which couldn't be released on Blue Dawn -- so we will consider working on it if our both schedule will allow it. In the meantime enjoy some 'off day' memories from the late eighties!"
The album consists of ten tracks, six of them composed by Ralf Wadephul, the others by Edgar Froese. While the latter tracks are not that different from other solo compositions by Edgar Froese and might well have been recorded recently, the material by Ralf Wadephul obviously originates from the late eighties, and though it has been slightly reworked for this release it gives a hint of what TD could have become if he had not left the band shortly after the tour. The other member of the band at the time, Paul Haslinger, was apparently not involved in the composition of any of the material.
This album can also be downloaded in MP3 format from the Tangerine Dream Download Shop either as a whole or individual tracks.
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