Tangerine Dream - Atem FLAC download

this is an awesome album! the first time i listened to it was when i was out in the cold at my brother's sledding race

Atem is often regarded as their best album from the Ohr label, and I can't find much argument in that. It's more accessible than Zeit, that's for sure, in that it's just a single disc with one side-length cut and three somewhat shorter cuts. While this isn't the first TD recording with Mellotron (1972's Ultima Thule, released before Zeit, was), this was the first where the Mellotron was now more permanent in the band's gear (at least until the late '70s). I remembered when I first bought this, as a two-for-one package deal on Virgin Records with Alpha Centauri (I then was lucky to acquire the German original on Ohr) being disturbed by the artwork. Playing it, I was simply blown away! I loved those big Mellotron passages and big drumming from Chris Franke that opens the title track, and I love how it builds to this intense climax before it mellows out big time with this hypnotic pulsing, and near the end, what sounds like really sinister sounding helicopters. "Fauni-Gena" is Edgar Froese's piece, sounds to me like a blueprint for his 1975 solo album Epsilon in Malaysian Pale. Full of what sounds like a tropical jungle, and just absolutely loaded with Mellotron. Tron strings, brass, and flute, it's all over it, but has a more sinister overtone than on Epsilon. "Circulation of Events" features this really strange droning sounds that really trip me out, while "Wahn" features a lot of screaming and startling percussion, before it ends with a nice Mellotron theme. Great stuff, though, like their other albums from Ohr, it's not an easy listen, but this album, as well as the other three they did for Ohr have been favorites of mine for years.