Tangerine Dream - Mars Polaris download free

Between 1996 and 1999, Tangerine Dream remained relatively quiet on the new release front - a couple of commissioned new age video soundtracks for Miramar aside, the time was spent starting setting up Edgar's own TDI label. Mars Polaris finally arrived in June '99 (complete with an alternative mix of the album accidentally shipping - more on which later), and is the final step on from the sound of Goblins' Club that TD had been playing with over the two aforementioned soundtracks.Featuring none of the guest musicians found on the earlier albums of the 1990s, Mars Polaris is a very conscious attempt to return to the fully electronic sound Tangerine Dream became famous for. Indeed, the more romantic side of the band's sound is notably missing from the bulk of the album, with the emphasis returning to rumbling synth sequences and atmospheric synth solos, backed by the well programmed drum loops first introduced on Goblins' Club. Electric guitars appear occasionally, slightly breaking the more solemn mood, but on the whole thing is an attempted return to electronic space music - hence the theme of the album and its titles.It would be foolish to expect Mars Polaris to live up to the quality of Phaedra, Force Majeure, Poland et al., and it quite clearly doesn't. Running at well over an hour, it is the band's longest studio album since Zeit back in 1972, and as with almost all latter day Tangerine Dream, the ideas are too thin on the ground to fill out such a run time satisfactorily. Newcomers to the band would be best to avoid this for the meantime, but for the many who were disappointed by the band's move to a pop/rock sound at the turn of the 1990s, this record might restore some faith. Either way, the good ideas outweigh the bad for the first time in a decade, and that makes it an album worth revisiting once in a while.A note on TDI and Eastgate releases: of all the cockups Virgin made with their 'Definitive Edition' series of remasters in 1994 and 1995, none match the carelessness with which Edgar's label seem to treat the band's releases - and thus their fans loyalties. It is has become known in the fanbase that Edgar will happily release compilation after compilation of largely existing material in need of money, but it seems he doesn't even double check what is being released sometimes. The 1999 mispress eventually appeared as a proper release several years later as Mars Mission Counter (asking fans to effectively purchase half of the final album again). When Eastgate gave their masters for Membran to give a wider release in 2009, they handed over the mispressing for Mars Polaris again, alongside Mars Mission Counter, which means it is possible to buy two different albums containing the identical material, yet not labelled as such. In the five years since this release, it has not been rectified (much like the glitches on the terrible Melrose Years re-recordings). Utterly shameful.