Renaud Loutre listens to… Tangerine Dream — Le Parc (1985)
There are albums that make you want to sit still.
Le Parc is not one of them.
It makes me want to find my coat, put a radio in my bag and disappear somewhere.
Preferably somewhere with trees.
I have a weakness for parks. Cities are terribly fond of telling you what they are — through buildings, traffic, monuments and people rushing importantly from one place to another. A park is different. A park is where a city loosens its collar.
And Tangerine Dream seem to understand this.
Nine pieces. Nine places. Not postcards exactly, and certainly not musical tourist guides. They are more like memories of places after you have returned home, when geography and imagination have become muddled together.
Bois de Boulogne (Paris) ★
Paris and I have an understanding.
It agrees to be magnificent and slightly ridiculous, and I agree to keep returning.
The Bois de Boulogne is another Paris altogether. Leave the boulevards behind and suddenly there is water, woodland, long paths and enough space for your thoughts to stop bumping into one another.
Tangerine Dream don’t recreate the park. They do something much better: they give it motion.
The music seems to move constantly forward, like following a path without being entirely certain where it leads. There is something elegant about it, but also just enough unease to make you keep walking.
One of my favourites on the album.
Possibly because I know the feeling.
Central Park (New York) ♡
Central Park is impossible.
Someone apparently looked at Manhattan and thought:
“What this needs is an enormous patch of green in the middle.”
Quite right too.
I remember the extraordinary sensation of standing amongst trees while knowing that one of the world’s loudest cities was waiting just beyond them.
This track captures something of that contradiction for me. It doesn’t remove New York from the park. The city seems to remain somewhere inside the music — movement, machinery, lights, people — but softened by distance.
I have a particular fondness for this one.
Perhaps because Central Park itself feels slightly improbable.
Gaudi Park (Güell Garden, Barcelona) ★★★
Now this…
This is wonderful.
Barcelona already has the slight disadvantage of looking as though somebody has been allowed to design a city after eating too much cheese before bedtime.
Then you arrive at Park Güell.
Curves. Colour. Stone. Mosaic. Architecture behaving badly.
Splendid.
And Gaudi Park feels exactly right to me — playful without becoming silly, strange without becoming alien. The synthesizers twist and change shape in much the same way the surroundings seem determined not to obey a straight line.
Of all the places represented on Le Parc, this is perhaps where the marriage between music and memory works best for me.
I have stood there.
And listening to this takes me back.
Favourite track.
Tiergarten (Berlin)
Berlin doesn’t reveal itself in quite the same way as Paris or Barcelona.
It makes you work a little harder.
There is something cooler and more architectural here, and Tangerine Dream allow the track room to breathe. It feels broader somehow — a landscape rather than a destination.
I haven’t finished with Berlin yet.
I suspect Berlin hasn’t finished with me either.
Zen Garden (Ryoanji Temple, Kyoto)
Here the journey turns inward.
There are fewer imaginary footsteps.
More space.
Perhaps that is the cleverness of Le Parc: travel isn’t always about covering distance. Sometimes the most interesting journey involves standing perfectly still and noticing what your brain does when nobody gives it anything to chase.
I am not especially good at that.
I am an otter.
We investigate things.
Le Parc (L.A. – Streethawk) ★★
And then Tangerine Dream put wheels on everything.
Le Parc has movement written through it. Nighttime streets, lights sliding across glass, machines moving through a city that never entirely seems asleep.
Yes, it was used for Streethawk, but even separated from that association it has a wonderfully cinematic quality. You don’t merely listen to it.
You go somewhere.
Where?
I’m not entirely sure.
That is probably why I like it.
Hyde Park (London)
Hyde Park is less exotic to me than Kyoto or Yellowstone, but that doesn’t make it less interesting.
Perhaps familiarity changes the way we listen to places. You don’t arrive with expectations. You notice smaller things instead: people on benches, conversations passing you, water, dogs, bicycles, somebody eating something they really should not be feeding to the ducks.
Tangerine Dream make it feel temporarily unfamiliar again.
That is quite a trick.
The Cliffs of Sydney (Sydney)
Suddenly the album opens outward.
Sky. Water. Distance.
You can almost feel the horizon getting larger.
There is a recurring quality throughout Le Parc that I particularly like: Tangerine Dream aren’t trying to describe scenery literally. They appear more interested in the emotional temperature of being somewhere.
Sydney feels expansive.
Yellowstone Park (Rocky Mountains)
And finally, we leave the city behind altogether.
There is something appropriate about ending here. After Paris, New York, Barcelona, Berlin, Kyoto, Los Angeles, London and Sydney, humanity gradually seems to become less important.
Landscape wins.
I rather like that.
Renaud’s travelling bag
🥇 Gaudi Park
A marvellous collision of place, imagination and synthesizers.
🥈 Bois de Boulogne
Paris wandering music. Elegant, mysterious and constantly moving.
🥉 Le Parc
Night-time adventure. Put your headphones on and disappear.
Special fondness: Central Park
Because finding a forest in Manhattan remains one of humanity’s better ideas.
Final thoughts
Le Parc isn’t really an album about nine parks.
It is an album about what happens when place becomes memory.
I’ve walked beneath the trees of the Bois de Boulogne. I’ve wandered around Gaudí’s extraordinary playground in Barcelona. I’ve stood in Central Park with Manhattan rising beyond the branches.
None of them sounded like Tangerine Dream at the time.
But memories are peculiar things.
Perhaps they do now.
Renaud Loutre 🦦
Traveller. Listener. Occasional disappearance down interesting paths.
