I was overjoyed to hear that Peter Baumann was stepping back behind the keyboards to record a new album after so many years. Most people know Baumann for being part of the classic line-up that produced huge galactic-sounding Tangerine Dream albums such as Phaedra and Rubycon during the mid Seventies. And its seems that the death of Tangs founder member Edgar Froese in January 2015 was the catalyst for Baumann to work on Machines Of Desire.
A whoosh from the cold edge of space introduces “The Blue Dream”. A bass drone creeps in, then a steady pounding bass drum beat. Choir voices hover over the top and play a haunting melody. This opening sounds like a spacecraft docking sequence from some sci-fi movie. Then the sequencer hits in and it’s sublime, real shivers down the spine stuff. It’s when Baumann starts riffing as the track progresses that there’s this touch of Tangerine Dream that sort of sneaks in when you least expect it. “Searching In Vain” is a more brooding track, with thunderous Oberheim-sounding chords under a melody that’s almost as light as air. This is the soundtrack for the Voyager craft hurtling towards the unknown alone within the cosmos, one that makes you feel uneasy about your own place in the universe, but also comforts you in some strange way.
“Ordinary Wonder” has a grand out-there opening and the kind of sound that Astropilot would go crazy for. The lead line drifts over the top of these sonic solar waves in a breezy fashion and leaves you, the listener, time for your mind to meander around the bigger questions of life. “Crossing The Abyss” begins with clattering bell-like synth sounds, and we are transported to the dark realms of the universe. When the tune kicks in, it almost scuttles around the feet of the rhythm that underpins it, and by the end the music descends in a downwards spiral.
The album as a whole has a fairly melancholic air to it, but any new Peter Baumann music after 33 years is always going to be worth listening to. Machines Of Desire slowly seeps into your skin and then makes you realise just how much we have missed his compositional work in the intervening years. Apparently, this looks like the start of a new recording phase for Baumann, one I’m certainly looking forward to hearing more of.
-Gary Parsons-