POP MUSIC REVIEW : TANGERINE’S LIGHTWEIGHT SHOW

In recent years, German synthesizer trio Tangerine Dream has put its murky technology to use mainly in the service of accompanying visuals--big-budget movies, that is--so it was no surprise that the group’s sounds Thursday at the Universal Amphitheatre often seemed like a sound track for the light show. This show is, according to TD founder Edgar Froese, “a tale designed by light. It can’t be described by words.”

That’s a challenge if ever we’ve heard one, so here goes: There were lots of thin, very slowly revolving beams of light that would intermittently shine in the audience’s faces--rather handy for checking one’s watch every five minutes. The three screens behind the computer banks also played host to a compendium of slide images: clouds, the earth, Stonehenge, birds, ancient Egyptian artifacts, the sun. Heh-vee.

Visual aids, however hackneyed, were appreciated. Any large dose of Tangerine Dream music can be a real endurance test for a sober mind, with minimalist electronic repetition and many simple--not “deceptively simple,” just simple--compositions that are basically just two- or three-note exercises in ominousness with a lot of noodling thrown in the cracks.

Tangerine Dream aspires to the sort of instrumental interludes that Pink Floyd pulled off so grandly in its middle period. But for Floyd, those stretches were breaks between ideas , whereas here they’re the whole show. Virtually every piece seemed an extended prelude in search of a climax.

But the crowd whooped it up, glad to see the Tangerine boys back on the concert circuit after a 10-year hiatus from U.S. performance. Presumably it took the trio that long to pay off the electric bills from the last tour.