THE ZOO OF TRANQUILITY

"Zoo of Tranquillity" was inspired by concepts and designs of British artist Paul Spooner, who happens to be a master of sculptural animation. Spooner created an anteater, a lion and aa wood-pecker among others, for his book "Mooving Animals". Johannes Schmoelling was tempted to capture the magic of little absurd machines cheerfully spinning, lazily grinding, endlessly wiggling.

He likes to take his listeners to a Zoo beyond human reasoning where nothing happens to serve a purpose, to make sense or to fulfill a certain goal. "I like to create scenarios for the ears, to give a certain depth, perspective, colouring and three-dimensional quality to sound textures. I like to arrange them like stage-sets".

Around the middle of 1979 Edgar Froese interested the recording engineer and church-organ player Johannes Schmoelling in the idea of forming a new Tangerine Dream group which had broken up in 1977. He remained with the group until 1985. His first solo-album "Wuivend Riet" (1986) belongs to one of the best selling albums of the Erdenklang Label. "Zoo Of Tranquillity" (Theta Label 1988) and "White Out" (Polydorf 1990) appeared on Polygram labels.

This actual version had been re-recorded and remixed in 1996 at Riet Studio Berlin by Johannes Schmoelling. 1995 Erdenklang Records released his 3rd CD "Songs No Words", inspired by the piano album "Lieder ohne Worte" by Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, published 1834. Now Schmoelling is working in his own "Riet-Studio" in Berlin as a composer and producer for theatre, TV- and filmcompanies.