You can’t hold back the water, and there’s perhaps no greater testament to the unstoppable nature of time than to learn that Phaedra, the 1974 album by Tangerine Dream that broke the mould for music, effectively becoming the world’s first synth-based global smash hit, is now – incredibly – 50 years old.
In fact, as of February 2025, it’s actually 51 years old…
The futuristic masterwork saw the band at the top of their game, pushing the envelope of what was possible within the studio and scotching any previous notion of synth music being a novelty or mere flash in the pan. With Pheadra, Tangerine Dream – the German three piece formed by Edgar Froese, Christopher Franke, and Peter Baumann, all of whom went onto prodigious solo careers – put synths on the map and let the world know that electronic music was here to stay.
And now this 51-year-old classic is being re-released in limited edition six-disc anniversary box set form to celebrate.
The set consists of five CDs and a Blu-ray, with a remastered original album mix as its centrepiece. Just the thing if your 51-year-old vinyl copy has seen better days.
Alongside the new remaster are two discs of outtakes from the original sessions – tracks that didn’t make the cut at the time and have been languishing in vaults for over half a century – and a disc featuring a complete live concert by the band, recorded at their UK live debut, at the Victoria Palace Theatre in London in June 1974.
The package is rounded off with a Blu-ray disc featuring a new 5.1 surround sound mix by artist, producer and Porcupine Tree front man Stephen Wilson and comes complete with an illustrated book with a new essay by Tangerine Dream authority Wouter Bessels.
70's synths are here to stay
Phaedra was Tangerine Dream’s first album on the (still fairly virgin) Virgin Records and, while already their fifth, was their first album to be given a sufficiently enthusiastic UK and global push. Recorded in the UK at The Manor studios in November 1973, it was also the first TD work that featured an early sequencer, allowing the band to step beyond the keyboard and create ‘machine music’ that would otherwise have been unplayable by mere mortals.
Christening the sound ‘Kosmische Musik’ - a term coined by the band’s Edgar Froese – this ‘impossible’ new music soon caught the attention of boffins and 'new music' lovers and the album spent 15 weeks on the UK charts upon its release.
Their electronic breakthrough was, of course, followed by subsequent hits such as the following year’s Rubycon but it was perhaps Jean Michel Jarre’s 1976 album Oxygene that took on Tangerine Dream’s vision and truly amped it into the mainstream.
And as for the future of electronic music? The rest is, as they say, history.
It’s turning into quite the year for anniversaries. Similarly sharing a 50th this year is the immortal I’m Not In Love by 10cc, while INXS Listen Like Thieves just celebrated its 40th.
Phaedra’s 50th Anniversary Edition is released on 18 April and you can pre-order it here.
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