Tangerine Dream’s invitation to play Coventry Cathedral in 1975 was a hot potato. In December the previous year, the classic line-up had performed at Reims Cathedral, where around 6,000 “hippies and deadbeats” turned up and desecrated the coronation site of French kings – according to the nation’s news outlets.
Concerns that the same thing could happen again in England were never far away. Others saw the invite to a Berlin-based group as a mark of disrespect, since the original Coventry Cathedral had been bombed by the Germans during the war; an incident within living memory for many in the West Midlands at the time.
In the end, the event went off without incident – no hippies, deadbeats or Anglo-German tensions, and the show subsequently passed into legend. Tangerine Dream were invited back in 2022. None of the members from the original show were there, with bandleader Edgar Froese having changed cosmic address in 2015.
Where some of Froese’s decisions were questionable at times (understandable over a 50-year tenure), his successor Thorsten Quaeschning’s navigation has been exemplary thus far. Nonetheless, Froese’s DNA continue to inform everything Quaeschning, Hoshiko Yamane and Paul Frick do, right down to the six-part improvised Sessions performed during the encore, corresponding with the resonance of the room (G minor, fact fans).
From Virgin To Quantum Years celebrates a period of musical exploration that only really omits the Pink Years era from 1967 to 1973, when synthesisers were in their infancy and erratic improvisations on drums by the likes of Klaus Schulze would be too difficult to replicate in the live arena.
Froese may no longer be with us, but Coventry Cathedral 22 proves there’s plenty of mileage left
Their signing to Virgin Records coincided with their implementation of the sequencer, of course – a move that became so influential in electronic music, ergo pop music, that many of these workouts sound amazingly contemporary.
Betrayal (Sorcerer Theme) undoubtedly influenced the soundtrack of Stranger Things; Los Santos City Map, meanwhile, stands up against classics such as Phaedra and Love On A Real Train here – a track they recorded for Grand Theft Auto 5.
The mixing and matching of old and new is exemplary, and the audience clearly agrees. Froese may no longer be with us, but Coventry Cathedral 22 proves there’s plenty of mileage left in the current iteration of an ongoing electronic institution.
From Virgin To Quantum Years: Coventry Cathedral 22 is on sale now via Kscope.
