Interview with Jerome Froese (December 2025)

For those of us who’ve long wandered the glowing corridors of sequencers and shifting waveforms, the name Froese echoes like a sacred frequency. Born into the heart of Berlin’s electronic avant-garde, Jerome Froese didn’t merely inherit the legacy of Tangerine Dream — he reimagined it. As the son of Edgar Froese, he was raised not on lullabies, but on oscillators, arpeggiators, and reel-to-reel visions of sound.

Long before most knew the possibilities of a synthesizer, Jerome was already twisting knobs, layering textures, and decoding the secrets of electronic alchemy. By the time he officially joined Tangerine Dream in 1990, he had already mastered the tools that shaped a generation. Over 16 prolific years, his guitar-infused soundscapes pushed the band into bold new dimensions — earning seven GRAMMY nominations and turning concert halls into portals of shimmering resonance.

After parting ways with the group, Froese continued his journey inward — and outward. With his solo debut Neptunes, he carved a new path into uncharted sonic terrain. Whether sculpting sound in solitude or charting new sonic frontiers, Froese continues to explore tonal galaxies with the soul of a voyager and the precision of an architect — taking his musical vision one step further into the realm of his own creation: ‘Guitartronica’.

A fusion of sequenced electronics, atmospheric pads, and expressive guitar work, Guitartronica blurs the boundaries between analog warmth and digital clarity. It’s not just a genre — it’s a dreamstate. And Jerome Froese is its architect.

With the release of his latest jewel, Sunsets in Stereo, we at Peek-A-Boo, are delighted to speak with Jerome Froese — to explore the sonic path he’s carved, from his formative years with Tangerine Dream to the ever-evolving musical realms of his solo journey.

Q: Jerome, it’s a real pleasure to have this conversation with you. There’s no doubt your music has found its way into many chapters of people’s lives, and we’re truly delighted to have this opportunity to talk with you.

Before we wander through the landscapes you’ve traveled through, you once said that your aim was to develop the guitar sound in a way that defied what people usually expect — even minimizing other instruments to let the guitar truly speak. This led to the creation of Guitartronica — something uniquely your own. Can you tell us more about this concept?

Jerome: In my family, the guitar was actually the first instrument anyone picked up – not the synthesizer or modular sequencer. Years ago, my dad told me that Tangerine Dream only really had a reason to exist as long as there was at least one guitarist – or someone named Froese – involved. Ideally, both. My own journey with the guitar probably began like that of many other people. I started on a nylon-string acoustic to learn the basics. The electric guitar came a bit later, though I’d already spent some time messing around on my dad’s electrics before finally getting one of my own.

A little later, during boarding school, I met some like-minded people who were just as obsessed with exploring licks and more advanced techniques. We were always showing each other new things – and, of course, there was a bit of friendly competition. Who would get to play at the next school gig?

Back in the ’80s, we were inspired by rock and metal guitarists. By the ’90s, though, I got more interested in using the guitar in unexpected ways. I started collecting all kinds of effects to see what I could do with them. This sometimes caused a few disagreements in the studio with traditional rock guitarists, especially when Edgar and I put some wild effect on their guitar tracks and all we’d get in response was, “What’s this? Go and play it on a synth!”.

It wasn’t until the mid-2000s that I felt confident enough to try a solo album and actually put my ideas into practice. The constant progress in technology has opened so many doors since then. For me, the real fun is making guitars sound like they’re not guitars at all, pushing them into territories usually reserved for other instruments. The term ‘Guitartronica’ kind of came about by accident – a way to put into a single word the sounds I was hearing...