Alpha Centauri (album)

Untitled

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AllMusic
Pitchfork Media	(7.8/10)

Alpha Centauri (1971) is the second album by the German electronic music group Tangerine Dream. The music on this album is quite different from Tangerine Dream’s first album Electronic Meditation, partly because of a heavier reliance on keyboards and electronic technology, although they still mostly remain in the background: the dominant instruments on the album are organ and flute. The other difference is that this album focuses on dark, spacey soundscapes as opposed to jam sessions. The shift in instrumentation resulted in an atmosphere dubbed by Edgar Froese himself as Kosmische musik.

This album sold 20,000 copies in their native Germany, nearly four times as many as their later classic Phaedra.

A nowadays extremely rare single "Ultima Thule" was released in the same year. Side 1 employs the same guitar riff as "Fly ...", but the single was at the time otherwise an unconnected release. Re-releases of Alpha Centauri in the 2000s have however included either or both parts of Ultima Thule as bonus tracks.

Track listing

No.	Title	Length
1.	"Sunrise in the Third System"	4:21
2.	"Fly and Collision of Comas Sola"	13:23
3.	"Alpha Centauri"	22:04
4.	"Oszillator Planet Concert" (Sanctuary/Castle (2002), Arcàngelo (2004), Reactive/Esoteric (2011))	8:03
5.	"Ultima Thule, Part One (2000 remix)" (Arcàngelo (2004), Reactive/Esoteric (2011))	3:24
6.	"Ultima Thule, Part Two" (Reactive/Esoteric (2011))	4:24

Personnel

• Edgar Froese – guitar, organ, bass, coffee machine, composer
• Christopher Franke – drums, percussion, flute, zither, piano, VCS3
• Steve Schroyder – organ, voice, echo machines, iron stick
• Udo Dennebourg – flute, voice
• Roland Paulyck – synthesizer

External links

• Alpha Centauri at Discogs (list of releases)