Looking Back on Tangle Edge: In Search of a New Dawn

When I first discovered Tangle Edge sometime around 1991--after reading a review of their debut album in the now long defunct Sound Choice magazine--the thought of a band from Norway reviving the kind of acid-drenched space rock that the early Hawkwind had pioneered was preposterous. After all, we were just a few short years away from the new millennium and we'd all long gotten over the acid daze of the early 70s. But on In Search of a New Dawn, Tangle Edge (primarily guitarist/keyboardist Ronald Nygard and bassist/keyboardist Hasse Horrigmoe but also joined here by drummer Rune Forselv) somehow managed to revitalize both psychedelia and art rock in a way that was indebted to the traditions of both without being derivative of either. In Search of a New Dawn, in addition to its striking futuristic Egyptian cover art, is eclectic in the best sense of the word, displaying such diverse influences as King Crimson, Hawkwind, the Grateful Dead, Gong, Eloy, Far East Family Band, Popol Vuh, and Amon Duul II. Using typically "progressive" instrumentation (flute, Moog, string ensemble and, incredibly, ring modulated penny whistle) to augment the more conventional guitar/bass/drum line-up, Tangle Edge moves from angular prog rock ("The Centipede's Tune") to thundering hard rock ("Caesar's Integrated Flaw") to middle eastern exotica ("Mushy Shadows from a Lost Caravan") to psychedelic freakouts ("Isis at the Invisible Frontispiece" and the mind melting "Solorgy"). The album's evocative arrangements feature both electric and acoustic guitars equally and showcase the group's tendency to stretch out into lengthy, feverish modal jams that are experimental yet oddly accessible. As a consequence, Tangle Edge occupies that shadowy nether region somewhere between the psychedelic space rock of Hawkwind (think In Search of Space) and the orgasmic/organic acid trips of the Dead at their lysergic peak. Seasoned with just the right amount of charming quasi-folky mysticism (which, incidentally, reminds me of the late lamented Third Ear Band), In Search of a New Dawn is now strangely apropos for a moment in time that saw the rebirth of psychedelia through the fractured lens of a generation that survived the excesses of both the new wave glam and the hair metal glitter of the 80s. Thirty years on, Tangle Edge's debut album can now be seen as a central ally in the war the Ozric Tentacles and Porcupine Tree were then quietly waging against the vast emptiness of a corrupt and controlling empire of factory processed sound.