This new reissue offers up a new remastering of the original album, an second disc featuring a previously unreleased live set from 1973, and a full colour 16 page booklet featuring rare pictures, ect & a new essay by respected music journalist Malcolm Dome.

I guess you could say “Atem” was the bands first album to get interest from a wider less experimental audience, and in places it sonically hinted at the more approachable  & controlled atmospheric sound of albums like “Phaedra”.

The original album features four tracks in all, and has a running time forty one & a half minutes. It  opens it up with the epic title track that takes up  the lion share of the album with a run-time of twenty & a half minutes. The track opens with a swirling ‘n’ churning electro sound-wash, which quickly leads into an urgent mixture of swarming ‘n’ stabbing synth textures that are marking out an alien/ swirling melody-this is propelled along by a constant ritual drumming like pound. As the track progresses the band shift through various synth sounds & textures- sometimes going towards more jam-out territory, and at others returning to the like march melody of the start. At around the 6th minute the drums drop out, and the band start to explore more ghostly & intergalactic licked synth textual drifts ‘n’ ebbs which seem to dart & shimmer around you, with the odd more frying or scuttling alien like texture appearing ever so often in the more harmonic/ drifting textures. At around the 12th minute a more constant bobbing & urgent ritual like pound travels & melts around the track structure, sometimes almost fading but always seemingly there. By 14th minute the pounding texture has faded & the band lock down into more fixed & harmonic ambient like dwells. By the 15th minute things start building-up with subtle yet shuddering like electro noise judders & whirls, which are joined by more firm ‘n’ consistent bass synth elements & more harmonic synth sustains,yet still it never fully takes off.  The tracks gets more noisey ‘n’ ambient gurgling as it nears its end.

Next is the just shy of eleven minutes of "Fauni-Gena" which finds the band creating a wonderful eerier yet dense brew of mellotron, VCS3 analogue synth & organ textures- it sounds like a flute & string led melancholic journey through some strange & odd alien jungle- where weird animals/ birds  darting ‘n’ hover above you, & strange whispered voices call from the surrounding undergrowth

The albums finished off with two five to six minute tracks. First there’s the growing dark intensity of “Circulation of Events” with it’s eerier  slowly roaming synth throbing ‘n’
circling opening, which leads into a hypnotic rhythmic chopping synth dwell later part. Then lastly there’s “Wahn", which starts out with the band creating a playful swooping ‘n’ darting sonic landscape  from just electronic altered vocals & drums, then mid way through the synth joins the track creating a more woozy & hopeful return to the rhythmic feel of the beginning of the  albums first track.

All told the original  album offers up a varied & cleverly crafted suite of tracks, which see the band creating the most focused  & sonically polished work of their
more experimental ‘Pink Years’.  “Zeit” is my favourite TD album of this period, but “Atem” is a very close second. The  new remastering seems to give a bit more depth & clarity to the array of sounds & textures on offer here, yet it still retains its 70’s alien other-ness

Moving onto the new elements on this new edition, and firstly we have the second cd  which features a forty minute live recording from 1973 from the Deutschlandhalle in Berlin. The single moping track moves from wavering synth drones, electronic texturing & eastern tinged guitar sound-scaping. Onto clamouring & enclosing  rhythmic electronic texturing, through to more thoughtful & expanding spacey synth  run’s that are mixed with graceful yet melancholic string like mellotron textures. Onto more bright ‘n’ bobbing synth & electronic work-outs that are underpinned by the consistent bass-line throb of the VCS3. Back to more lose & jam like guitar ‘n’ electronics shimmers & drifts.  All told it’s a most rewarding set which shows the band in a great & vaired form

Lastly we have the new 16 page booklet which takes in tripped-out star-scape backed live pictures of the whole band, poster artwork, more individual pictures of each of the band in a live setting, original album artwork, and a  six page essay by Malcolm Dome- this covers the albums sound & production, along with  the bands genreal history from the ‘Pink Years’. There’s maybe not quite as much material here compared with the other reissues in the series, but it’s all interesting & well put together.

All told this is another great reissue in this series of classic Tangerine Dream albums- a lot of time & effort has been put into the whole of this series making these the only editions of theses classic & highly influential albums you’ll need.