Vangelis - Direct (1988)

The sole album from a short stint on the label, Vangelis' Arista period overlaps chronologically with Tangerine Dream's move to Private Music.  There's definite similarities: MIDI, FM synthesis, all the digital-era trimmings - but what still sits at the core of Direct is the talent of a fantastic composer and musician, with the technology serving the music.

And in terms of music, there's a lot of it compared to previous Vangelis albums - just over an hour, so a good cross-section of moods, tempi and so on.  The Motion Of Stars kicks off in high gear with twinkling sequences and a couple of nice ambient interludes, and things progress from there with other Vangelis trademarks: a couple of tracks with wordless vocals (Gloriana and Ave), harp stylings in The Oracle Of Apollo, and more.  Quite a few anthemic rock-like tracks, some that would be very good soundtrack music (Elsewhere is a personal favourite), and a memorably odd album closer with a spoken voiceover.  Lots to recommend.

link

pw: sgtg

Previously posted at SGTG:
L'apocalypse Des Animaux

La Fête Sauvage

Albedo 0.39

Spiral

Opera Sauvage

Antarctica
Soil Festivities

Mask
Invisible Connections

Vangelis - Mask (1985)

Dark and symphonic Vangelis from his brief mid-80s period of pushing the boat out a bit, releasing more experimental but always compelling records.

Like its predecessor Soil Festivities (link below), the only track titles on Mask are numbered Movements - six of them here - and appropriately so, for a more classically-minded suite.  The ten-minute opener sets the mood of high drama, in sweeping minor key strokes with a dazzling sequencer pattern rattling along.  Lots of vocals here and throughout, with a choir chanting pseudo-Latin phonemes.  Movement 2 offers a bit of gentle respite before Movement 3 blasts back into the darkness, with particularly effective percussion and a brief calmer interlude with piano.

 

Into the album's second half, and a tuned percussion motif that made me think of Security-era Peter Gabriel underpins Movement 4 as the choir responds to a solo vocalist.  The lengthy Movement 5 returns to the dizzying sequencer runs of the first track, then the gorgeous finale gives the most focus to Vangelis' classic synth palette.  Wonderful, exhilarating music that's ambitious and enjoyable in equal measures.

 

link

pw: sgtg

Previously posted at SGTG:
L'apocalypse Des Animaux

La Fête Sauvage

Albedo 0.39

Spiral

Opera Sauvage

Antarctica
Soil Festivities
Invisible Connections

Vangelis - Spiral (1977)

One more album from Vangelis' time at RCA, and an album where another important piece fell into place to create his classic sound: the newly-released Yamaha CS-80 enters the picture at this point.  Still plenty of electronic prog bombast to enjoy, but there's also a heavy dose of sequencing here, both making the opening title track particularly memorable.  Next up comes one of Vangelis' rare uses of his own voice, processed throughout Ballad.to great effect.  Dervish D is lots of fun, a bouncy, even bluesy sequencer piece that does indeed suggest a whirling dancer.

Two long tracks make up the album's second side.  To The Unknown Man is perhaps the best known track from this album, featured in television soundtracks and elsewhere, and expands Bolero-style on a simple melodic theme over different sections.  To finish, 3 + 3 overlays a driving sequence with a gorgeous melody to great effect.  One of Vangelis' best pre-Polydor albums, if not the best outright.

link

pw:sgtg

 

Previously posted at SGTG:
L'apocalypse Des Animaux

La Fête Sauvage

Albedo 0.39 

Opera Sauvage

Antarctica
Soil Festivities
Invisible Connections

Vangelis - Albedo 0.39 (1976)

Mid-70s Vangelis from his London base at the time, gradually working his way from progressive rock and jazz fusion-infused electronic music to purer electronica over the years that followed.  The tracklist of the roughly space-themed Albedo 0.39 has a nice mix of accessible tunes that would become signature pieces for Vangelis (Pulstar, Alpha), lengthy electronic prog wig-outs (Main Sequence and Nucleogenesis), and ingenious/slightly odd connecting tracks in between.  Few more Vangelis albums to come, been trying to fill some gaps in my listening to him that I haven't dipped in to in years.

link

pw: sgtg

 

Previously posted at SGTG:
L'apocalypse Des Animaux

La Fête Sauvage

Opera Sauvage

Antarctica
Soil Festivities
Invisible Connections

Vangelis - La Fête Sauvage (1976)

More Vangelis music for a Frédéric Rossif wildlife documentary, this one seemingly focused on big cats judging by the various album cover pictures used over the years.  When originally released, the soundtrack album's LP sides were simply titled La Fête Sauvage Part 1 and Part 2; this has transferred to CD (at least on this Polydor one, some other reissues differ) as a single 38 minute track.

It's great Vangelis music, rooted in his mid-70s sound and very much looking ahead to the late-70s lushness of Opera Sauvage in its second half.  First though, we get what I presume maps to Side 1 of the LP, in just over 18 minutes that takes in an uptempo theme, three short sections of percussion, voices and flute (performed by guest musicians) and lastly a more laidback electronics and percussion theme.  That last section leads in nicely to the long Vangelis-only piece that takes up the rest of the album.  With reverbed electric piano and lush synthesisers, it shows Vangelis honing in on the gorgeous sound of his late-70s work.  It's effectively a theme and variations, returning to the main melody right at the end, and has lately become one of my absolute favourite pieces of Vangelis' music.

link

pw: sgtg

Previously posted at SGTG:
L'apocalypse Des Animaux

Opera Sauvage

Antarctica
Soil Festivities
Invisible Connections

Vangelis - Opera Sauvage (1979)

One of three releases in a busy 1979 for Vangelis, Opera Sauvage was his third soundtrack for French nature documentarian Frédéric Rossif (link to the first, Apocalypse Des Animaux, below).  By this point, the gorgeous, gossamer sheen of Vangelis' palette of synths and electric piano was at its height, and these seven pieces work wonderfully as an album in their own right.

The understated pulse of L'Enfant could be seen as a precursor to Chariots Of Fire, and in fact this album is quite literally a precursor to that more famous soundtrack - director Hugh Hudson started out by using L'Enfant and Hymne as working music, and both pieces remained in Chariots Of Fire, although one in a different form and the other given to a brass band.  On Opera Sauvage, in between those two tracks is the album's longest and my personal highlight, the beautifully meditative Rêve with its slightly bluesy/jazzy electric piano lead.

I'm not really aware of the content of Rossif's TV series Opera Sauvage, but it may well have been partly avian-themed given the bookends on side two here.  Mouettes (gulls) is a brief synth piece and the multi-section Flamants Roses (flamingos) features Jon Anderson on harp, setting up the full-on collaboration to come.  In between these two pieces are Chromatique, which gives more interesting instrumental variety in its guitar textures, and the suitably evocative Irlande.  One of Vangelis' most accessible records of his classic era, and I reckon one of the very best.

link

pw: sgtg

Previously posted at SGTG:
L'apocalypse Des Animaux

Antarctica
Soil Festivities
Invisible Connections

Vangelis - Antarctica (1983)

A winter favourite of mine, and an underrated Vangelis album.  Antarctica was the soundtrack to Koreyoshi Kurahara's film Nankyoku Monogatari (South Pole Story) about the ill-fated Japanese exploration of 1958.  I haven't seen the movie, but the music here aptly conjures up great expanses of ice and natural beauty, as well as the treacherous weather conditions and moments of high drama.

The grand, stately theme sets the stage with its simple melody and gradually developing percussion.  The main melody will repeat quite a few times across the album, which would feel a bit like short-changing listeners on a regular studio record, but is perfectly fine on a film soundtrack.  Vangelis always keeps things interesting.  The second track, Anarctic Echoes, is a particular highlight, with the melody slowed right down amid a dreamlike atmosphere; Life Of Antarctica is another that develops really well.  The more upbeat moments of high drama work well too, like the jittery synths of Kinematic, and the darker atmospheres of Other Side Of Antarctica.  Wrap up warm and enjoy.

link
pw: sgtg

Previously posted at SGTG:
L'apocalypse Des Animaux
Soil Festivities
Invisible Connections

Vangelis - Invisible Connections (1985)

The year after Soil Festivities, Vangelis pushed the boat right out to make his most experimental album in nearly a decade - and even ended up having it released on the esteemed Deutsche Grammophon label.  Three lengthy tracks of dark ambience make this an essential headphones-in-a-dark-room experience.

The title track is up first, and is the most free-form, with seemingly random bleeps, echoes and occasional faraway percussive sounds dominating the first half of its 19 minutes.  Atom Blaster is next, with what sounds like plucked piano strings subjected to tape manipulation, and the final track Thermo Vision is probably the highlight for me.  High electronic tones contrast with the eerie background to make for perhaps the most recognisably Vangelis-y track.  Recommended for late-night investigation.

link

Vangelis - Soil Festivities (1984)

Often underrated, coming in after a run of legendary, indelible soundtracks (Chariots Of Fire, Antarctica; not to mention Blade Runner, which wouldn't get a proper album release til much later), Vangelis' 1984 release was this great album.  Soil Festivities conceptually put the natural world under the microscope, reflected in its artwork (rear cover below, not to mention the jumping beetle on the front).  Vangelis described it as just the album he wanted to make, "rather than sell a million records", and the result was a classic that I reckon ranks among his very best.

The five 'Movements' that make up the album open with the longest, at 17 minutes, as storm clouds give way to a rainforest teeming with life, centred around an insistent pulse as the track opens up to all the warm, melodic synth washes and odd little sounds you'd expect from Vangelis.  In the closing minutes, this gives way an elegaic electric piano section and more rain.  The second movement is similarly melodic and insistent; both of these tracks would be perfect documentary soundtrack material for a marching army of ants or suchlike.

The second half of the album is more dark and dramatic, especially in the very soundtrack-like Movement 3.  The most minimal track, like a trip back through time to life in a primordial soup, Movement 4 is based around a slow, repetitive minor-key sequence that would appeal to Tangerine Dream fans, but it's unmistakably Vangelis.  Lastly, Movement 5 is more lively again, led by an almost jazzy electric piano.  Soil Festivities is gorgeous, highly listenable 80s electronics of the highest order - recommended.

link

Vangelis - L'apocalypse des Animaux (1973)

My absolute favourite album by Evangelos Odysseas Papathanassiou, ever since picking up a vinyl copy ten years ago.  Like many Vangelis albums, this is superior soundtrack music, on this occasion soundtracking a nature documentary by French director Frédéric Rossif.

After the album kicks off with a cute, bouncy opening theme, we're straight in to the first stone-cold classic - La Petite Fille De La Mer is six minutes of utter gossamer gorgeousness, and is rightly the track by which this album was represented on at least one Vangelis compilation.  On another plane entirely, however, are the suite of two tracks on Side 2 of the album, which I used to listen to over and over for hours on end. Crank up Création Du Monde as loud as you can, and bask in its majesty.  You can quite well imagine this being the music that would herald the genesis of a brand new world, which after its expansive turmoil cools down to a calm repose with La Mer Recommencée.

link