When considering ambient music--from chill-out tunes, through progressive house to naturalistic New Age soundscapes--people tend to think of Kraftwerk as the electronic pioneers. Yet Kraftwerk themselves were influenced by another German act set on exploring the beauty of machinic music--Tangerine Dream--as were such electro luminaries as Jean Michel Jarre, the Orb and countless others. Formed by Edgar Froese in 1968 (and taking their name from a lyric in "Lucy In the Sky With Diamonds"), Tangerine Dream spent the 1970s and early 1980s delivering a renowned series of abstract, instrumental synthesiser-led dreamworks like Phaedra, Rubycon, Force Majeure and Tangram. And the beautifully packaged Dream Sequence is a wonderful double-CD collection of digitally remastered pieces from those halcyon years (along with two tracks from their inappropriately classy soundtrack to Tom Cruise's Risky Business).

Tangerine Dream's lush, flamboyant, often tense and dramatic epics have marked much modern music, with the percentage still rising daily. Dream Sequence is an ideal introduction to their (for the most part) unsurpassed back catalogue. --Dominic Wills