I was listening to the Greek master of electronic music Vangelis and his very rare album "Silent Portraits", and thought I'd post some good interviews with our hero.
If you're not familiar with his music, a good place to start is the 2003 compilation "Odyssey" (CD), which has most of his best compositions from various albums and soundtracks. I must also recommend "Blade Runner Trilogy", an updated triple disc 25th anniversary version (CD/MP3) of his amazing soundtrack to Ridley Scott's masterpiece from 1982.
Click here or the picture below to see a very good 24 minute TV interview from 1984, where Vangelis goes into great detail about his process of composing and producing:
Here is a 10 minute interview with Mark Lawson on the BBC Radio 4 program "Front Row", from 2008: stream or download.
Sound on Sound wrote a very detailed article in 1997 about how Vangelis works in his Nemo Studios in London.
And finally, here is Vangelis improvising on his favourite keyboards:
And finally, here is Vangelis improvising on his favourite keyboards:
3 comments:
The "Odyssey" CD leaves out a couple of important pieces from his work.
First and foremost it has no tracks from "Heaven and Hell", which featured the iconic "So long ago, so clear", used in the tv series Cosmos.
Alpha and Pulstar were featured in that series as well, if my recollection is correct, but since vocal tracks are few and far between in Vangelis' production it would have been a valuable addition.
Furhtermore there are no tracks from "See you later". That album, togheter with "Beaubourg", are some of his more experimental stuff which needs repeated listenings to grow on you.
Apart from those omissions it has a wide range of his work, not least from two of the most beautiful albums "L'acopalypse des Animaux" and "Opera Sauvage" written for Frederic Rossif's movies of the same names.
As for the "Blade Runner trilogy" I think it is too much, the "Blade Runner" CD is better because it is more concise.
The most striking thing about the "Blade Runner" music is its mid-eastern influence which made it a perfect companion for the books about Marîd Audran by Georg Alec Effinger which are cyberpunk put in a fictional Mid-eastern future city.
The movie "Blade Runner" itself is a cyberpunk influenced movie, based on a science fiction story influenced by the "film noir"-genre, but it predated the cyberpunk movement, yet captured its essence.
Anyway, Vangelis, along with his contemporary Jean-Michel Jarre, has become too fond of lush background soundscapes, and has left his minimalistic approach as seen in Alpha and Pulstar.
The aforementioned Frederic Rossif soundtracks were more lush as well, yet in a minimalistic style, and not least with very nice melodies.
Of his more modern work "Ocean" and "Voices" are by far his most accessible and main stream, but I'd also like to direct you to "Direct" (no pun intended) and "The City", though both are a bit overproduced in places, they have their own musical worlds which will drag you in if you give them a chance.
Just to support my claims about "Blade Runner Trilogy" vs "Blade Runner" I have re-listened to both. The trilogy seems to be more disconnected from the movie, and doesn't resonate well with the previous work.
Sometimes artists should leave their work as it was instead of trying to re-imagine it for anniversaries.
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