Search - Various Artists :: Park Is Mine / O.S.T. - Tangerine Dream

Raw soundtrack, a minor item in their recording career

John Cope | 12/21/2001

(3 out of 5 stars)

"This album, recorded in winter of 1984, just as the band came back from the Poland tour, was published years later by Silva Screen Records, without permission of the band. The latter perhaps did not plan to release the soundtrack, and therefore the musical material appearing on this CD is rather raw, without proper remix and mastering. Sound is unbalanced throughout the album, and editing is choppy indeed. What a difference in comparison to the officially released albums that were mastered by Tangerine Dream themselves!Musically, this album is the closest to its immediate predecessor, "Poland", and heavily borrows in theme from that recording. You might suppose that the best fragments were utilized on "The Park Is Mine", but no, actually, one fragment that is prominent on this album is taken from the very ending of the live album, "Poland", and that fragment is the weakest point of the latter, in fact the only weak point of that album. This said, the rest of the recording disappoints, mostly due to the lack of unifying theme or motivation for an album other than producing a mere sound track for the movie that was contracted. While it has some high points, the overall impression is quite that of mediocrity. According to Christopher Franke, the leading member of the band, they had only two weeks of free time in 1984, the rest spent in the recording studio, composing music for various movies they signed contracts for. This must have resulted in high variance of quality of these recordings, and it just happens that "The Park Is Mine" is one of the weakest soundtracks ever recorded. If you are a casual listener, you might consider skipping this album altogether. As a long-standing fan of the band, I am glad to have this CD in my collection, but I rarely listen to it, and I only can wish Tangerine Dream had the chance to edit and master this album and release it in a proper fashion, just like they did with their other albums."