Ricochet

Very nice vinyl, smart  gatefold cover.

Ricochet is the first live album and seventh album overall by German electronic music group Tangerine Dream, released in 1975. It consists of two side-long compositions mixed from recordings of the UK and France portions of their August–October 1975 European Tour. The sound of the album is similar to that of the group's other "Virgin Years" releases, relying heavily on synthesizers and sequencers to produce a dense, ambient soundscape, but is much more energetic than their previous works. Ricochet uses more percussion and electronic guitar than its predecessors Phaedra and Rubycon, and borders on electronic rock. The main innovation on the album is the use of complex, multi-layered rhythms, foreshadowing the band's own direction in the 1980s and trance music and similar genres of electronic dance music.

Much of the raw material for Ricochet, in particular Part 2, was recorded at Fairfield Halls in Croydon, London, during Tangerine Dream's live performance there on 23 October 1975. The original, unedited version of this performance can be heard in set 3 of The Bootleg Box Set Vol. 1.^[2] No other source concerts have so far been identified. The piano solo at the beginning of "Ricochet, Part Two" was recorded at The Manor Studio.

After the Top 20 placings for Phaedra and Rubycon, Ricochet fared less well in sales, spending four weeks on the UK album chart, (all editions of the now defunct British Hit Albums erroneously state only two), reaching number 40.^[3]

In the original release of Ricochet, the sound of two hands clapping can be heard at the beginning of the second track. This is the final bit of applause before the music started, and was possibly left as a buffer before the start of the piece. This sound has been edited out in some of the re-released versions of the album, notably Virgin's 1995 "Definitive Edition" CD release, being possibly regarded as noise.^[4