Latest news with #TangerineDream
The Advertiser
04-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Advertiser
Take me back to the '70s: why nostalgia holidays are on the rise
1. Ovolo South Yarra, Vic: Whether you sleep in a Go Go Room or Rockstar Suite, ( Boogie ) nights spent at Ovolo South Yarra provide a trip back to a time of mini skirts and moon landings. Award-winning designer Luchetti Krelle conjured the groovy interiors, which are liberally lavished with pop art and primal hues. 2. Tangerine Dream, SA: Tucked into bushland just outside Deep Creek National Park on the Fleurieu Peninsula, this humble shack has an unmistakable '70s soul. Pop on a record, sink into the corduroy lounge chair, and ditch devices to bond over vintage board games or around the firepit. 3. Hillcrest Merimbula, NSW: It wasn't just the '70s construction bones that were retained during the renovation of this NSW South Coast motel. The free-wheeling spirit of the place remains in the drive-up brick building and the reinstated tennis court, even with the addition of every mod con you could wish for. 4. Casita Motel, NSW: Another NSW South Coast time traveller reborn, the recently opened Casita motel sings to a '70s song sheet with its painted brick walls, striped window awnings and retro signage. Even the outdoor shower - with its bold maroon arch painted on old-school block-work - screams vintage surf shack in the best possible way. 5. The EVE Hotel Sydney, NSW: A bold new arrival on the edge of Sydney's CBD, The EVE mixes '70s disco flair with modern polish. Expect velvet lounges, terrazzo floors and mood lighting that nods to Studio 54 - all set against a palette of bottle green and burgundy. Outside, the pool area with its matching loungers and sun shades could have been plucked from the pages of a Slim Aarons book. 6. The Shores Miami, Qld: While the revamp of this '70s motel was dictated by a vision more Melrose Place than Simon and Garfunkel, the original pool remains and so does the spirit of a simpler Gold Coast. Led by serial motel makeover designer Jason Grant (also responsible for Chalet Motel, Brunswick Heads and the Blue Water Motel, Kingscliff, both in NSW), the retro-inspired stay opened for a new generation of guests in January. 7. '70s Glam Studio at The Star Sydney, NSW: Neon signage, a circular love bed, a sparkling disco ball and your own private karaoke lounge await in this extravagant themed suite at The Star. Go full method actor with this one.
The Guardian
27-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
The Bear season four review – finally becoming the show it was always destined to be
Recalibrate your palate: The Bear is not the show it used to be. The relentless drama you were stunned by in season two – when you finished an episode and said it was the best show you had ever seen, then played the next one and said it again – is not coming back. Season four starts with Uncle Jimmy (Oliver Platt), the family friend who has invested in the fledgling Chicago eaterie The Bear, installing a countdown clock that says the business has 1,440 hours to save itself. But much of the new run isn't even about the restaurant. The show is outgrowing its premise, leaving behind 'yes, chef!', lingering closeups of seared beef and screaming matches in the pantry in favour of a different intensity, one that draws even more deeply on the characters and how they fit together. Indulge it – and you will have to indulge it, in a few ways – and you will find this experience just as rich. The restaurant is reeling from negative press – the Chicago Tribune's reviewer reports understatedly that they observed 'dissonance' – but the show returns seeming almost arrogantly relaxed. The first two episodes potter, enjoying extended montages of folk cooking to the artfully curated sounds of the Who, Talk Talk, the Pretenders and, in a preparing-for-service sequence that goes on for longer than you think it would dare, a brilliantly deployed excerpt from Tangerine Dream's soundtrack for the 1981 movie Thief. Between courses, characters set out their self-improvement goals: Tina (Liza Colón-Zayas) wants to train herself to cook a pasta dish in under three minutes; Cousin Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) wishes the little speeches he gives the waiting staff were more inspiring; Ebraheim (Edwin Lee Gibson) would like to help pull the numbers out of the red by becoming a commercial visionary. Dealing with the big stuff as usual are the head chef, Carmy Berzatto (Jeremy Allen White), and his faithful, frustrated assistant, Sydney (Ayo Edebiri). He wants to 'do better': communicate more, apologise more, explain more, shout less. She continues to wonder if she should jump ship to take a job at a flash new startup. A whole episode, co-written by Edebiri and Lionel Boyce (who plays Marcus), is given over to Syd visiting her cousin's house to have her hair done and discuss the dilemma with her cousin's young daughter. It's a lovely digression, but is it necessary? Well, yes. It may not feel like it during this year's slow start, just as it didn't during that apparently directionless third season, but Christopher Storer, the showrunner, knows what he is doing. More than ever, this is a show about family – the traumas they inflict on each other and the power they have to soothe them – and how families extend to friends and colleagues who can be just as beloved and just as maddening. That Richie is not actually Carmy's cousin and Uncle Jimmy is not anyone's uncle has always been an endearing quirk of the setup, but now it becomes essential and endlessly moving. Where once The Bear made pulses pound, now it lets the happy tears flow; the second half of the season is like one long therapy session. Syd isn't just deciding whether or not to take a job – she is deciding whether or not she is becoming a Berzatto. Once again, the centrepiece is a double-length episode dedicated to a family get-together. The whole gang is there, so that unbelievable extended cast – including Sarah Paulson, Bob Odenkirk and John Mulaney, plus new additions Josh Hartnett and a hilarious Brie Larson – is reunited, this time for the wedding of Richie's ex-wife, Tiff (Gillian Jacobs). With the unstable Berzatto matriarch, Donna (Jamie Lee Curtis), in attendance, passive-aggressively transferring her anxieties to whoever she is speaking to, the potential is there for another psychodrama along the lines of that sublime but gruelling Christmas flashback from a couple of seasons ago. But having put his creations and his audience through hell, Storer now lets the light in via a torrent of tenderly written, fiercely performed interactions where broken people who love each other start to heal, saying variations on those two beautiful phrases, 'sorry' and 'thank you'. Payoffs big and small ping in every scene as narrative seeds carefully sown – including in that bad third season! – burst into bloom and these people we have come to adore are rewarded. Not that it's ever easy: if the wedding episode is a classic, so is the painfully fraught, stunningly acted finale, where we don't know whether the most troubled of our cousins will find the courage to open up. Storer has shown a lot of courage in giving them the chance. This new Bear is doing much better. The Bear is on Disney+ in the UK and Australia and on Hulu in the US
The Guardian
26-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
The Bear season four review – finally becoming the show it was always destined to be
Recalibrate your palate: The Bear is not the show it used to be. The relentless drama you were stunned by in season two – when you finished an episode and said it was the best show you had ever seen, then played the next one and said it again – is not coming back. Season four starts with Uncle Jimmy (Oliver Platt), the family friend who has invested in the fledgling Chicago eaterie The Bear, installing a countdown clock that says the business has 1,440 hours to save itself. But much of the new run isn't even about the restaurant. The show is outgrowing its premise, leaving behind 'yes, chef!', lingering closeups of seared beef and screaming matches in the pantry in favour of a different intensity, one that draws even more deeply on the characters and how they fit together. Indulge it – and you will have to indulge it, in a few ways – and you will find this experience just as rich. The restaurant is reeling from negative press – the Chicago Tribune's reviewer reports understatedly that they observed 'dissonance' – but the show returns seeming almost arrogantly relaxed. The first two episodes potter, enjoying extended montages of folk cooking to the artfully curated sounds of the Who, Talk Talk, the Pretenders and, in a preparing-for-service sequence that goes on for longer than you think it would dare, a brilliantly deployed excerpt from Tangerine Dream's soundtrack for the 1981 movie Thief. Between courses, characters set out their self-improvement goals: Tina (Liza Colón-Zayas) wants to train herself to cook a pasta dish in under three minutes; Cousin Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) wishes the little speeches he gives the waiting staff were more inspiring; Ebraheim (Edwin Lee Gibson) would like to help pull the numbers out of the red by becoming a commercial visionary. Dealing with the big stuff as usual are the head chef, Carmy Berzatto (Jeremy Allen White), and his faithful, frustrated assistant, Sydney (Ayo Edebiri). He wants to 'do better': communicate more, apologise more, explain more, shout less. She continues to wonder if she should jump ship to take a job at a flash new startup. A whole episode, co-written by Edebiri and Lionel Boyce (who plays Marcus), is given over to Syd visiting her cousin's house to have her hair done and discuss the dilemma with her cousin's young daughter. It's a lovely digression, but is it necessary? Well, yes. It may not feel like it during this year's slow start, just as it didn't during that apparently directionless third season, but Christopher Storer, the showrunner, knows what he is doing. More than ever, this is a show about family – the traumas they inflict on each other and the power they have to soothe them – and how families extend to friends and colleagues who can be just as beloved and just as maddening. That Richie is not actually Carmy's cousin and Uncle Jimmy is not anyone's uncle has always been an endearing quirk of the setup, but now it becomes essential and endlessly moving. Where once The Bear made pulses pound, now it lets the happy tears flow; the second half of the season is like one long therapy session. Syd isn't just deciding whether or not to take a job – she is deciding whether or not she is becoming a Berzatto. Once again, the centrepiece is a double-length episode dedicated to a family get-together. The whole gang is there, so that unbelievable extended cast – including Sarah Paulson, Bob Odenkirk and John Mulaney, plus new additions Josh Hartnett and a hilarious Brie Larson – is reunited, this time for the wedding of Richie's ex-wife, Tiff (Gillian Jacobs). With the unstable Berzatto matriarch, Donna (Jamie Lee Curtis), in attendance, passive-aggressively transferring her anxieties to whoever she is speaking to, the potential is there for another psychodrama along the lines of that sublime but gruelling Christmas flashback from a couple of seasons ago. But having put his creations and his audience through hell, Storer now lets the light in via a torrent of tenderly written, fiercely performed interactions where broken people who love each other start to heal, saying variations on those two beautiful phrases, 'sorry' and 'thank you'. Payoffs big and small ping in every scene as narrative seeds carefully sown – including in that bad third season! – burst into bloom and these people we have come to adore are rewarded. Not that it's ever easy: if the wedding episode is a classic, so is the painfully fraught, stunningly acted finale, where we don't know whether the most troubled of our cousins will find the courage to open up. Storer has shown a lot of courage in giving them the chance. This new Bear is doing much better. The Bear is on Disney+ in the UK and Australia and on Hulu in the US
Yahoo
24-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Steve Rothery reveals details of new Bioscope album with Tangerine Dream's Thorsten Quaeschning
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Marillion guitarist Steve Rothery has revealed details of his new project Bioscope, a collaboration with Tangerine Dream's Thorsten Quaeschning. The pair will release their first album, Gentō', through earMusic in late July or early August, although the CD version is now available to pre-order from Marillion's Racket label for shipping in early May, the first 500 of which will be signed by the guitarist. "I've just returned from Abbey Road where the half-speed vinyl was being cut for my Bioscope project with Thorsten Quaeschning from Tangerine Dream," Rothery told Marillion fans in the band's regular newsletter. "The project started life in early 2020 and after several five-day trips to Berlin over the years, and a few days in my home studio, it was finally ready to be mixed and mastered! It has taken a little longer than anticipated but it's really sounding fantastic!" The album also features Elbow drummer Alex Reeves whose performance across the album is labelled by Rothery as "fantastic" You can see the new album art and tracklisting below. Rothery has been busy with Marillion in a live front, as the band have been performing their celebrated Weekend live events in the Netherlands, Canada and France, with Italy, the UK, Germany and Norway to folllow. Marillion are also working on a new studio album, although that is unlikely to see the light of day until 2026 at the earliest. Pre-order Bioscope CD. Bioscope: Gentō1. Vanishing Point2. Gentō3. Kinetoscope4. Bioscope5. Kaleidoscope
The Guardian
14-02-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘Less Star Wars – more Blade Runner': the making of Mass Effect 2's Bafta-nominated soundtrack
Mass Effect is some of the best science fiction ever made. That may sound like a grandiose comment, but it's true. As a trilogy, the original games from 2007-2013 effortlessly plucked the most cerebral ideas from the sci-fi genre and slotted them into a memorable military role-playing game that had players invested from beginning to controversial end. Whether you prefer the hopeful, optimistic outlook of Asimov, the dark and reflective commentary of Shelley, the accessible thought experiments of Star Trek, or the arch melodrama of Battlestar Galactica, Mass Effect has it all. The trilogy is as happy grazing on the western-inspired tropes of Star Wars as the 'hard' sci-fi of Iain M Banks, blending all its moods and micro-stories into a compelling, believable galaxy that somehow walks a line between breathless optimism and suffocating bleakness. Mass Effect is special. And like any successful video game series, the achievement of the franchise rests on the shoulders of a huge assembly of developers. BioWare project director Casey Hudson and the studio's co-founders, Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk, get a lot of the credit, but so much of its soul comes from BioWare's other creatives, too. The writing of Drew Karpyshyn, the art direction of Derek Watts, the vision of lead designer Preston Watamaniuk … and the soaring, cinematic music of Jack Wall. 'I had made a soundtrack for Jade Empire very successfully with BioWare before Mass Effect,' Wall tells me, when I ask how he became part of the team working on the original title. 'Then, they put out an audition process for what the team was calling SFX, the codename for Mass Effect. It was a blind audition, and BioWare got the files back from a number of composers. The team would listen to all those different things and decide who nailed it the most for the tone or the feeling they were picturing. And I won that audition blind.' Almost immediately, Casey Hudson got to work on giving Wall the brief. 'His mandate was 'I want this to sound like 80s sci-fi music'. No Star Wars, nothing like that, more like Tangerine Dream, Vangelis, Blade Runner. Those were the main ideas.' Hudson specifically wanted to channel that vintage analogue synth sound that defined the science fiction of the era (especially in movies) and imagined the multilayered, multitextured approach from Tangerine Dream as the perfect accompaniment to the dense and complex Mass Effect universe. Wall explains that BioWare played him a piece of music written by another composer called Sam Hulick, who had also auditioned for the project. While Hulick wasn't chosen to be the lead composer (because he was considered to be too junior for the job), Wall gave him equal credit on the soundtrack, thanks to his 'incredibly important' contributions to key themes in the first game. It wasn't until Mass Effect 2 that the music really came into its own, becoming integral to the whole experience. Where Mass Effect has this almost utopian outlook, channelling the optimism of mid-20th century sci-fi to establish its universe, the sequel is darker. The end of everything is nigh. From the off, you're told the final act is a 'Suicide Mission', and to get your affairs in order before you reach the point of no return. There's a pervasive pessimism, and every second you play you can feel the suffocating inevitability of sacrifice closing in around you. It needed music to match. 'Right at the beginning of the development, Casey Hudson came in and said 'I'd love to write the ending now',' Wall says, ''because everything's going to culminate there. I want that to be the main moment that everyone remembers. He gave me some guidance, and talked me through what he wanted [players] to feel – which is always the best way to work with a director.' Sign up to Pushing Buttons Keza MacDonald's weekly look at the world of gaming after newsletter promotion This track, aptly named Suicide Mission, may be the most important across the whole trilogy. It has a more orchestral bias than anything from the first game, and reflects the serious overall tone. It shows how rapidly Mass Effect matured from one game to the next. 'It had to be epic, it had to feel cinematic, it had to feel 'one man against everything',' says Wall. 'You needed to feel like you were saving the world, saving the galaxy, whatever. I came up with that main theme, and [Hudson] liked it pretty much immediately.' But before Wall and Hudson could start fitting the pieces together, there was some maintenance to be done. BioWare and Wall were unimpressed by how the music in the first game had been patched into the final product. 'The transitions were terrible,' Wall says when I ask for examples, 'and it just didn't do justice to the music. 'So, what we decided is that in Mass Effect 2, I would do all the implementation, which was something I'd never done before,' he continues. 'I had an amazing assistant called Brian DiDomenico who worked with me in my studio every day; he sat in my vocal booth with a desk and a PC, and I would send him my tracks, he would implement them into the game, and I would do a play test there and then. And we would tweak it until it was really good … BioWare was known for only putting out a game when it was ready, and so things got delayed a lot, but fans were super happy when they got it.' Wall remembers finishing the game, noting that the whole ending sequence came through 'in little tiny pieces of video that were spewed out by the game engine'. He took the files and fed them into a movie editor on his Mac, pieced the ending together, and edited Suicide Mission into it. He then wrote different endings to the track, reflecting the choices of the player. 'It was the biggest mind-fucking thing I've ever done in my entire life,' he laughs. 'And there was no one available to walk me through it, because they were all freaking out trying to finish the game. I handed it in, and they had to do a lot of massaging on their end in order to get it to work, but they did it … and the result is still one of the best ending sequences to a game that I've ever played. It was worth all that effort.' Wall did not return to score Mass Effect 3, the least well-received game in the trilogy. 'Casey was not particularly happy with me at the end,' he says. 'But I'm so proud of that score. It got nominated for a Bafta, and it did really well … [even if] it didn't go as well as Casey wanted.' Talking to Wall, I sensing an almost Fleetwood Mac level of creative tension between him and Hudson; the duo made something amazing that would live in the hearts of sci-fi and RPG lovers for ever, but at the cost of some relationships. 'Fallouts like that happen, it's just part of the deal,' he says. 'It's one of the few times in my career that's happened, and it was a tough time, but it is what it is.' Mass Effect 2's final mission can be survived. If you make all the right choices, and execute the plan with absolute lucidity and determination, you can save your main character and all of the crew as they stare certain death in the eye. But the much more likely result, at least for most players, is that you lose at least one member of the team. This ragtag bunch of heroes becomes splintered, and limps into the climax of the series wounded, demoralised and desperate. To me, it's a reflection of the brutal reality that good sci-fi reveals – a dramatic, honest look at the best and worst of human nature. Mass Effect Legendary Edition, which includes Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2, is available now on Xbox Series X/S, PS5, and PC.
