I'd imagine if he wanted to, Vangelis could hear something, rip it off and have a whole album of it into stores within a couple of months. The guy worked really fast. Remember, he pumped out 4 albums in 1979. Which is insane. But I'm not aware of anything else he ever produced that sounded quite as trailing edge as The City did to my ears. If it was all just a coincidence it was an unfortunate one. Or not. I was listening to the Twin Peaks soundtrack over the weekend and, well, a little goes a long way. The City is a bit less, which is actually a good thing. So, there's that.
I love Beaubourg. The first side is probably the best, but the end of the second side is deliciously apocalyptic. Invisible Connections I could never get into. See You Later I just scored recently. Listened to it and liked it but haven't revisited. It was a very expensive import when I was a kid and since I'd never heard anything from it apart from "Memories", I never took a chance on it. Exactly. If it had been readily available at $8.99 or whatever when I was a kid, I would have gobbled it up and probably enjoyed it at least as much as the Jon & Vangelis outings. I didn't mention those in my overview. I got The Friends Of Mr. Cairo fairly recently, maybe when I was visiting Berlin in 2018 and stopped by Saturn (sorta their Best Buy, only bigger and better). I had it as a kid and recalled liking it. It's cheezy as heck but lots of fun. In fact the movie geek aspects are part of its charm. Would give it a recommend if you go in expecting something a bit goofy and willing to have fun. Also, Vangelis is a hot daddy in the video...
As many have mentioned, I too was expecting The City to be a “Direct Part 2” and was a little disappointed that it went off in a very different direction. It literally took several years of listening to that album before it clicked and I finally “got it.” It became a true favorite, and now I can’t imagine my musical world without it. Absolutely essential listening for cloudy days, and fall/winter especially. Now, for Beaubourg I came up with a rather unique way to boost my appreciation for that album. I ripped the entire album as one single wave file, and extracted the most “musical” bits from the whole. I came up with six distinct sections, ranging in length from about 1:30 minutes to 4:30 minutes which I then mixed into several of my for-the-car compilations. So, listening to the album is now a different experience than it was at first, because it’s as if there are some proper “songs” hidden within. Probably sounds crazy, but there it is!
Apologies if posted before, my favorite from Jon and Vangelis, which is where I started with the big Greek virtuoso, besides knowing Chariots of Fire .... this is "Curious Electric"
For as much as I love his music, Invisible Connections is truly the...oddity in his discography. And that's saying something! I tried to listen to it again recently. It's not Beaubourg, it's not Synergy's Computer Experiments Volume One, it's...somewhere in the gray seas beyond. But in the same year, 1985, Vangelis returned with the brilliant Mask! See You Later was, as you say, unavailable domestically for a very long time. I didn't hear much about it, good or bad, just that it wasn't "essential." That's up to the listener. I like it, but it also feels like an outlier.
Funny, when I got to them, I found Connections easier to digest than Beauburg. Mostly because the latter is more "moving" and frantic, while Connections is more steady, closer to ambient and easier to surrender to.
Listened to Ignacio and Rapsodies for the first time over the last few days. They didn’t disappoint. Then last night I played Mythodea again, which is one of my favourites so far. Just reasserts my belief that Vangelis was one of the greatest composers of all time.
Just getting into El Greco. More ambient than I expected, but I'm enjoying the darkness. El Greco Vangelis (1998, EastWest)
I've never been able to get into Mask. Had it on vinyl when it came out, was very excited, played it and it seemed like a return to Heaven & Hell, one of my favorites, so I just assumed it would become a favorite too...and then nothing. Was never able to penetrate it. Lacked both the variety and the melodic coherence Heaven & Hell had, just manifested the choral drama. My record collection was stolen in the mid-'80s and I never bothered scoring Mask on CD until a visit to Amoeba Records in LA during a Christmas trip down there in 2014. Assuming I scored it used. Remained impenetrable. I have a massive Vangelis playlist I've been meaning to spin since he passed, but I've been too busy. It includes Mask so maybe it'll soak in, eventually. I've only listened to it 2-3 times or so, but I'd say it's odd in many respects. It's more pop/vocal, like his Jon & Vangelis works, but much, much darker and edgier. I said this about it in the album-by-album thread: It's an odd record. It sounds more like his earlier RCA albums than any of his other Polygram records, and even harks back to really old albums like Chiens - there's something Euro-folk, ancient and small scale about many of the melodies. But it's also definitely a forward-looking record as well - the electronic pulse of "Multi-Track Suggestion" isn't a million miles removed from the Blade Runner theme's, for example. Per an interview, the idea for the album had been germinating for around 5 years, so maybe some of it really did date to the RCA era.
Of course, it's behind a mask . Maybe it's obscurity is its raison d'etre. Is the experience we're supposed to have? I'm not superfamiliar with it. It's one of those things I want to go back to and never do. Which makes sense with the above.
I played it twice tonight. It's Heaven & Hell with the instruments from Soil Festivities. Which when you think about it is an odd combination. The melodies aren't as strong as the former, and the louder, more dynamic passages aren't the latter's strength (although they're great in context). I do remember bits and pieces of it as they play, but I recall that they didn't make much impression on me at the time and don't leave a lasting impression now. I wonder if this was one of his more improvisational works, which can be hit-or-miss in my book. It sounds nice, though. Like Soil Festivities. Pleasant to listen to. It's also not quite as chaotic and over-dramatic as memory said it was. Parts of it are quite mellow, quite a bit in fact. But I'd rather be listening to Heaven & Hell or Soil Festivities yet again. YMMV.
I liked Mask from first hearing it a couple of years ago. I need to try Beaubourg, See You Later and Invisible Connections again as they were the ‘difficult’ ones for me.
I think of Beaubourg as the soundtrack to a surreal supernatural suspense/horror film set in a perpetually-snowy, overcast wood.
I'm not sure what you mean. Mask was recorded at Nemo Studios in 1984. Vangelis' arsenal had grown considerably, with the CS-80 at the center of it all.
"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time...like tears in rain. Time...to die."
Yeah, but Mask recalls the choral drama of Heaven & Hell, only with his modern Soil Festivities sound. It's a combo that doesn't quite work.
Circa '85, Yes were the 2nd band or musician I fell in love with after Jethro Tull. I went catalog on both during those days in 6th grade. After getting into Yes pretty hard core, I found out they auditioned Vangelis around the Relayer days. That would've made an unusual combo, but you know Yes... Always a revolving door every couple albums. Honestly, I never liked Mr Cairo too much but loved Private Collection, tho it's been years since I heard it.
There's a nice long assembly on the Elsewhere site of various artists, politicians and record labels paying their respect to Vangelis. I didn't know he was the godfather to Deborah Anderson (daughter of Jon Anderson) and that she as a child sat in the studio with Vangelis as he was composing and recording Blade Runner. Imagine being able to tell that story to someone! Elsewhere: Latest news updates
Many fine tributes, some from personalities you wouldn't expect; nice to see Bear McCreary's, and one from Michelle Rodriguez! Vangelis's influence and appeal was universal.
I saw Elon Musk's note on the Vangelis' tribute wall on the Elsewhere site. I guess that did not really surprise me.
Something about lockdown in the spring of 2020 made me want to listen to "State of Independence" a lot and that led me down a rabbit hole to learn that I probably first heard it covered by Donna Summer before later hearing the original by Jon Anderson and Vangelis. I played it relentlessly in the afternoons because for some reason the phrase "state of independence" resonated with me. I also started to wish really hard that someone other than Donna Summer would give it a modern cover. It's a really neglected song.
