Pilots of Purple Twilight: The Virgin Recordings 1980 – 1983

Yet another reissue for some classic "Tangs" but along with much previously (officially) unavailable treasures. I think I only buy this stuff because, to my ears, just about every new studio album from TD since 1996 has been noodly, doodly, blandy rubbish!...The sound quality across these disks is commendable overall but in terms of the regular albums, if you are happy enough with, say, the original 1980s CD releases, there's little reason to replace them in my view...... Besides, I'd have to take issue with the term "remastered" here. It doesn't simply mean exhuming the master tapes and creating new dubs from them, twiddling with the equalisation, dampening the tape noise levels and widening the stereo separation. Essentially it means going back to the original instrument track tapes and recreating the pieces, as per the original production mixing process. In the case of the "Exit" album, this new rendering contains the same faults we've heard from dubs used on previous releases. Most notable is the 'Choronzon' piece where there is (still) a short sound dip, stereo narrowing and partial loss of left-channel audio about 70 seconds into the track. As such, this is neither remastering nor restoration.On the plus side, the tracks used in the German TV series Tatort - 'Das Madchen auf der Treppe', 'Flock', 'Katja', 'Speed', 'Daydream' and 'Moorland' - are a welcome replacement for my scratchy old vinyl versions!As noted in other reviews, soundtrack material from "The Soldier" is largely made up of short-ish cues rather than fully-fledged pieces. Many of them are adaptations of ideas from the live (allegedly!) albums "Logos" and "Poland". A nice bonus for the set but not vital.Definitely worth having is the (apparently) genuine performance of the 1982 London Dominion concert. The first piece incorporates live renditions of some previously-released tracks and the performances of 'Midnight in Tula' and 'Dominion' have a little more sparkle than their previously-released versions on the "White Eagle" and "Logos" albums respectively.Finally we come to the legendary soundtrack to Michael Mann's "The Keep". There are some marvellous, fully-formed pieces here, some of which took TD into very different directions compared to their normal style. Frustratingly, however, this is still not the complete soundtrack and previous - "legal" and "not-so-legal" - issues have contained more material. I can only assume that music clearance issues remain convoluted!The "coffee table" book that comes with the set contains a large set of photographs (some previously-unpublished and a few used to publicise the band's "Poland" and "Le Parc" releases for the band's tenure with the Jive Electro label in the mid-80s, so not strictly appropriate for this release!). The accompanying text journals the band's travails during the 80-83 period and is of moderate interest.Overall, though, I felt a tad disappointed by the package, which is a shame because there's clearly been a lot of work put into it. At a hundred quid it's not worth the present - November 2020 - asking price.

It’s astonishing that the complete Logos (London Dominion) concert has not seen the light of day for near exactly 38 years! (at least not in a properly produced official capacity) It’s wonderful to hear it after all this time with all 3 encores. As with the earlier in search of Hades collection, the overall quality is excellent. There are 10 discs and a really good book with facts not just a scrapbook of random photos. Remastering is first class . Nerds like me will recall that the Das Madchen auf der treppe tracks have never been released on CD so it’s great to have these as bonus tracks. £100 is a fair price compared to a number of contemporary collections . Look at how much the Pink Floyd later years set is and reconcile the amount of previously unreleased material and it soon becomes clear that this is a relative bargain. Highly recommended for new or existing tangerine dream enthusiast!

This is ok, but.....I think it’s a missed opportunity. It also suffers from the quality of its predecessor.The remastered studio albums are pretty good, even if they are less than the sum of their parts. Some great music, alongside, some not such great music.The Dominion Theatre concert is to these ears, a bit dull, especially when you consider something like the awesome Preston 1980 gig that is widely available.The really good news for most purchasers will be the addition of The Keep and The Soldier soundtracks. The latter is particularly interesting and has some excellent music on it. I have the TDi version of The Keep and whilst this is nice to have here, I’ve never quite understood what the fuss was all about!I would have liked to have seen more live stuff and that would have really lifted this box set and made it an essential purchase. As it is, this is good but it just doesn’t hit the heights of the 70’s set.

Another very good box set from TD, and from one of my favorite era's - the early 80's. First listen was Diamond Diary from Thief, and the sound quality was enough to convince me that this was going to be a very satisfying box set. Much better separation of instruments across the speakers, and definitely a beefed up sound, especially on those pounding sequencer beats.I skimmed through a few of the other tracks (will give a proper listen later), but the music cues on The Soldier sound very interesting. Not sure why there appear to be two Dominion live concerts though...though they appear to have been recorded on different dates, on first listen they sound almost identical.One of the things you need to accept with TD is that they re work and reuse a lot of their music cues across different albums, and especially on the soundtrack. For example much of the music on the Tatort TV show, The Keep and The Soldier will sound very familiar from previous albums.But my one caveat is with The Keep soundtrack. Once again its not the actual movie soundtrack, but only some of the pieces of music from the movie, and a few other (unused) tracks thrown in. My biggest disappointment is the omission of the opening title music, which is my favorite from the movie. Plus, the track Canzone sounds like its been altered/reworked. It starts out similar to the opening title music, and then morphs into the choral section, and then back to the first section. I know there was an 'official' release of sorts of The Keep soundtrack some years back, but as I recall that contained very little music from the film. I cannot remember if this version of Canzone was on there. I would be interested to know what other think on this.