Stratosfear

Stratosfear is an electronic music album released in 1976 by the German group Tangerine Dream. It marks the beginning of the band's development away from their uncompromising early 1970s synthesizer experiments toward a recognizably more melodic sound, a trend they would pick up again in 1979's Force Majeure. The title track "Stratosfear" has been played live many times and has been released in a re-mixed form on a number of other albums. Stratosfear combines Tangerine Dream's acoustic and electronic influences more tightly than before. For instance, at the end of the last track, "Invisible Limits", the deep piano/flute tune reveals the album's romantic flavour even after the earlier predominantly synthetic compositions (tracks #1 to last part of track #4). The LP reached No.39 in the UK, in a 4-week chart run, and eventually reached silver status for selling an excess of 60,000 copies.