Tangerine Dream – 50 Years Of Phaedra : At The Barbican

Description

Release Date 30th January 2026

What began as an experimental session at Richard Branson’s Manor Studios in Oxfordshire became a seismic event in modern sound. Using the Moog sequencer for the first time, Tangerine Dream – then comprised of Edgar Froese, Christopher Franke & Peter Baumann – crafted ‘Phaedra’, an album that shimmered with innovation, mystery & a palpable sense of discovery.

Half a century later, Tangerine Dream returned to London’s Barbican to honour that landmark work – reimagining it for a new era. Across its three vinyl LPs, ’50 Years Of Phaedra: At The Barbican’ captures this transcendent live performance, in which the current line- up – Thorsten Quaeschning, Hoshiko Yamane & Paul Frick – revisit the spirit of ‘Phaedra’ with the very tools that Froese & his collaborators helped pioneer.

Part of Phaedra’s magic lay in its imperfections: the original sequences were never truly quantised, their timing drifting unpredictably through the Moog’s analogue circuitry. That subtle instability became part of its charm – a human pulse within the machine – yet it long left current bandleader Thorsten Quaeschning intrigued by what a fully realised version might reveal. Now, fifty years later, Tangerine Dream have revisited the work with the precision that technology once denied them. ’50 Years Of Phaedra: At The Barbican’ is the first time ‘Phaedra’ has been performed fully quantised, each motif beautifully aligned with a crystalline precision previously unheard.