Tangerine Dream, a German electronic music group founded in 1967 by Edgar Froese. The band has undergone many personnel changes over the years, with Froese being the only continuous member. Drummer and composer Klaus Schulzewas briefly a member of an early lineup, but the most stable version of the group, during their influential mid-1970s period, was as a trio with Froese, Christopher Franke, and Peter Baumann. In the late 1970s, Johannes Schmoelling replaced Baumann, and this lineup, too, was stable and extremely productive.
Tangerine Dream’s early “Pink Years” albums had a pivotal role in the development of krautrock. Their “Virgin Years” albums helped define what became known as the Berlin School of electronic music. These and later albums were influential in the development of electronic dance music, and also the genre known as New Age music, though the band themselves disliked the term. From the late 1990s into the 2000s, Tangerine Dream has also explored some styles ofelectronica.
Although the group has released numerous studio and live recordings, a substantial number of their fans were introduced to Tangerine Dream by their film soundtracks, which total over sixty and include Sorcerer, Thief, The Keep, Risky Business, Firestarter, Legend, Near Dark, Shy People, and Miracle Mile. They have recently composed the original score for the video game Grand Theft Auto V.
Inferno (1911), the first Italian feature film ever made, is a fantastical journey into the imagination of Dante as we travel through hell encountering angels, demons and Lucifer himself. Lovingly produced over three years using incredible special effects and set designs this cinematic masterpiece, a blockbuster in it’s time, had been lost in film archives for nearly 100 years.
This DVD release of Inferno is scored by Tangerine Dream and brings this silent film into the modern age in an extraordinary and powerful synthesis of old and new.
The Italian epic came of age with Giuseppe de Liguoro’s imaginative version of the Inferno, loosely adapted from Dante and inspired by the illustrations of the 19th century artist Gustav Doré. The film took over three years to make involving more than 150 people and was the first full length Italian feature film ever made. Inferno was first screened in Naples in the Teatro Mercadante 10th March 1911. It’s success was not confined to Italy, it was an international hit taking more than $2 million in the United States alone today’s equivalent of a major blockbuster.
