This is the first Tangerine Dream album to feature their now classic sequencer-driven sound, which is considered to have greatly influenced the Berlin School genre.

After purchasing a modular Moog synthesizer with their advance, in late 1973 the group came to The Manor Studio, in Oxfordshire to begin recording.

The tape machine broke down, there were repeated mixing console failures and the speakers were damaged because of the unusually low frequencies of the bass notes.

[9] The title track was originally based on an improvisation recorded in the studio, and unintentionally exhibits one of the limitations of the analog equipment used at the time.

"Mysterious Semblance at the Strand of Nightmares" features Froese soloing on a Mellotron which is treated by slowly sweeping filter effects.

[16] Writing in his 2000 The Ambient Century, Mark J. Prendergast describes the title track: "At over 17 minutes it conveyed feelings of the cosmos, of giant suns exploding, of huge ocean movements, of mythological lands, of eddies and drifts.

"[9] The title track and "Mysterious Semblance at the Strand of Nightmares" are both featured in the 2018 interactive Netflix film Black Mirror: Bandersnatch.

The protagonist Stefan receives a list of music recommendations, featuring such artists as Edgar Froese, Tangerine Dream, Bauhaus and The Cure.