Exit

Exit marked the start of a significant new chapter in the long, complex saga of electronic adventurers Tangerine Dream. Presumably, part of the shift had to do with Johannes Schmoelling, who'd only been part of the synthesizer trio for about a year when the album was made. Changing tastes, times, and technology are likely also responsible, but whatever the reasons, Exit was the album on which the band definitively bid farewell to the epic-length cosmic excursions they'd cut their teeth on in the '70s. Here they embraced a more concise, conventionally melodic framework favoring steady grooves. Synth-pop was exploding at the time, and its echoes bounce off the beats of instantly accessible tracks like "Chronozon," which coincidentally isn't a huge distance from what T. Dream's synth-wielding countrymen Kraftwerk were doing at the time. The sound that much of the world at large associates with Tangerine Dream came into its own here, showing that the veteran Krautrockers still had some tricks up their collective sleeve.