Diary entry Tuesday 26th March 2026 & Tangerine Dream's Machu Picchu
Awakened today at 3 am, having rested my head on the pillow from 9:45 pm. Five hours of relatively undisturbed sleep is pretty good for me as I’ve been going through insomnia problems which, together with a persistent ankle/achilles problem, means this has been a difficult period for sleep, an affliction lasting from the beginning of October to present date. Parkinson's symptoms/complications.
Normal routine on most mornings is a small bowl of gluten-free cereal, coffee, lights low, accompanied by some ambient tunes courtesy of Tangerine Dream. My biggest love of music is Rock & Classic Metal, but from around age 15 when I went to see them live in Manchester, I have been a fan of Tangerine Dream & find that type of ambient music quite soothing, helping to cope in times of unease.
Over the years my favourite Tangerine Dream album has been Ricochet, whilst acknowledging that many people see Phaedra as their greatest work. Perhaps my favourite overall these days, & certainly most often played, is the somewhat rare Machu Picchu, a more intimate album project, not planned originally for release in the typical composing & recording process. As the sleeve notes explain, it pays homage to a man, well known in the music business & who helped forge the band's career from a distance many years ago. A man unafraid to help a band break through, believing in their talent & extraordinary skills. His name is John Peel. The same John Peel who played Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells album in full on the radio, allowing a level exposure of which an artist could only dream.
The background story of Machu Picchu, a one piece 42 minute composition, came to life after John Peel passed away in October 2004 in the city of Cusco, Peru, close to the sacred Inca site Machu Picchu. Fans of Tangerine Dream will appreciate the album to be more than just another record but a non-verbal applause, greeting, & dedication to a man who truly was remarkable & unique in the best sense of the word. Edgar Froese, the main driver of Tangerine Dream, didn’t want to release the composition in the first place, having explained to his wife that he made the record purely for himself as a personal homage, but as years past his wife persuaded him otherwise. Still, one is hard-pressed to locate the Machu Picchu record in the band's discography. I'm not aware of whether that omission is due to some complexity of copyright or licensing issues, or simply a fulfilment of Edgar Froese's original intentions. Whichever, I'm very happy my wife Lynne bought it for me as gift.