I don’t know about this what’s it like? I recently got Beauborg from 1978. It’s bizarre. One long improvisation on a Yamaha CS-80 with the ring modulator in overdrive. Lindstrom said it was his Metal Machine Music. While that doesn’t give you any idea of what it sounds like, I know what he means.

I really just know his “Blade Runner” soundtrack (oh and the soundtrack from “Chariots Of Fire”). What else is worth checking out?

The Dragon and Earth, some Aphrodite’s Child.

I think I’ve heard something from his collaboration with Jon Anderson, but I can’t remember now.

‘Antarctica’ is well worth checking out if you like the ‘Blade Runner’ soundtrack. Most of his stuff’s on spotify, though strangely no ‘Voices’ which was the album he did with several guest vocalists and features this classic:

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I love Jon & Vangelis’s Friends of Mr. Cairo, but I haven’t heard that one... Is it good?

As for Vangelis’s solo albums, Heaven and Hell is the one I’d recommend getting the first: it’s an absolute classic of majestic, sci-fi and fantasy themes with quasi-operatic choral bits. And if you like that one, Mask is kinda similar, though the orchestration and choral bits are more subdued, and more devotional. Opera Sauvage is another favourite, it’s more moody and low-key than his other late 70s work, but it has pretty atmospherics and melodies. Albedo 0.39 also has some epic sci-fi tunes (they kinda sound like precursors to early 90s trance and ambient house), but also some wonky prog improvisation that Vangelis sometimes does, which I don’t particularly care about. Other albums of his from this era that I dig are Spiral, China, and Antarctica... Basically, anything he did between 1975 and 1985 is worth checking out, if you like beautiful melodies and cinematic atmospheres played with vintage synths. Even Beaubourg has its cool moments, though I’m some really sure why thought he needed to extend an mostly atonal synt improv session into a 40 minute album.

Yeah, should have been an 80 minute album really, a missed opportunity there.

i bought that album when it came out. i remember “italian song” being very pretty but overall i don’t think i was crazy about it. probably would dig the synth textures more now.

Listening to ‘Beauborg’ now, what a blast. I can see the comparison with MMM, though it’s nowhere near as extreme. Very reminiscent of Raymond Scott or even Vernon Elliott. I imagine a few people would have bought this after his sucess with ‘Chariots of Fire’, must’ve blown a few minds.

I don’t know this record, didn’t know of any further Jon + Vangelis collabs after “Short Stories”, which I got in a vinyl haul and didn’t like that much.

How is it?

I love this track:

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i have this (as MP3s), i dig it—super prog, inna alan parsons/jan hammer way. for me the standouts on this are “and when the night comes” and “he is sailing.” horizons is a pretty standard (decent) 20-minute vangelis jam iirc.

friends of mr. cairo is the jon & vangelis classic but even that is hit and miss. someone could make a really great jon & vangelis greatest hits.

tuomas is otm about the vangelis catalog btw. “heaven and hell” is k-classic and basically everything through the mid-80s is just gorgeous synth stuff, some of it more tolerable than others

I love “state of independence” from friends of mr Cairo.

Yeah, it’s great. The Donna Summer cover version is awesome too.

don’t forget soil festivities! it’s pretty low-key, but I love it.

dude’s real name is bad-ass: Evangelos Odysseas Papathanassiou (Greek: Ευάγγελος Οδυσσέας Παπαθανασίου [evˈaɲɟelos oðiˈseas papaθanaˈsiu])

My mom used to have China on cassette, all I really remember about it is that it was really pretty.

Invisible Connections is pretty cool

I too will rep for Albedo

i will also ride for aphrodite’s child, his band w/ demis roussos

This is my favorite track from the previously-mentioned Antarctica:

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yeah aphrodite’s child is really good, and not just 666

The City has been my favorite one as of late

Chewshabadoo, Laurence Elliott-Potter under the name Aqua Fortis updated Albedo 0.39 for the breakbeat/hardcore crowd:

http://www.discogs.com/Aqua-Fortis-Equinox-To-Equinox/master/13525

^ sounds awful. the original rules tho

i, too, will rep for aphrodite’s child. and most everything else mentioned on this thread, actually (never heard invisible connections tho)

Funnily enough been listening to a lot of his stuff recently. I sort of wish I liked him more because he seems like a sincere and serious musician and I liked Aphrodite’s Child a lot. He did tackle a lot of different styles though, the albums I’ve heard tend to be all over the place and he’s made a LOT of albums I’ve never heard. “Beaubourg” is definitely a brave album to have made but I’m not convinced it’s actually all that great, certainly worth hearing though. The comparison with “Metal Machine Music” is less down to how it sounds than the rumour that he dashed it off to get out of a record contract—which I don’t believe for a second. Don’t know why “Heaven and Hell” is so popular here, I found it to be a right load of pompmous maggoty old cobblers, well first side anyway, almost unlistenable. “Earth” is good. Really though you should try to hear the second half of the “L’Apocalypse des animaux” soundtrack, it’s amazing, esp. when you consider it was recorded in 1970(!), it is, to use the old cliche, years ahead of its time!

i dont love heaven and hell, or dragon & hypothesis. in fact besides “earth” his best stuff imo is really the soundtracks: blade runner, apocalypse d’animaux, opera sauvage, antarctica.

the Chariots of Fire soundtrack is really, really fantastic, especially “Abraham’s Theme”

guys, “see you later” is the killer album.

I don’t know how to embed from vimeo, but:

http://vimeo.com/28142522

yes the chariots of fire sdtrck is great!!! cant blieve i forgot it. “bounty” is okay.

I saw Near Dark for the first time the other day and the Vangelis score was perfect in context. I’m not sure if it would work as a stand-alone album.

wait I thought Tangerine Dream did the music for that.

you don’t love ‘dragon’, max?

i will say unreservedly that i love ‘dragon’, tho it is no ‘earth’. it’s kind of like a sprawling companion piece to ‘earth’ tho, seems like something bo hansson would record if he were more into lovecraft than ‘lord of the rings’

whoop I gotta check dragon out apparently

yeah that post sold me on Dragon too. this weekend I got the “Jon and Vangelis” album which to me is so interesting because it’s...pretty good? but it’s also...deeply weird, and right up against the edge of awful? like I can be completely into it one minute and then repulsed by it the next. I also got L’Apocalypse des animaux which as noted upthread is really forward-looking—I think the melodies early on are pretty poor but the last track on it is spectacular, I was driving to LAX at five in the morning listening to it and it was like...perfect

Dragon is pretty good—it reminds me a lot of the good jazz-fusion Zappa stuff

Hey Derek Pringles, I understand what you’re saying and I’m sure Lindstrom was aware of this story when he told me about it, but as he’s the boss of his own record company, I’m not sure that’s the main reason why he brought it up. I’m pretty sure he was suggesting that his record label would find his new album Six Cups Of Rebel (which he was comparing to MMM and Beaubourg), which is a very heavily prog influenced disco record hard to market and that maybe most of his fans would dislike it as well. (This I would say is nonsense as it’s fucking great but that’s another thing for another thread.)

Sorry for the temporary derail. I too love Aphrodite’s Child and Albedo.

wait I thought Tangerine Dream did the music for that.

shit, yes, that’s right

so interesting because it’s...pretty good? but it’s also...deeply weird, and right up against the edge of awful?

Vangelis in a nutshell

even after surrendering I’m still on guard, but it is love

Come on!
Come on!
C’mon c’mon c’mon c’mon c’mon c’mon c’mon c’mon come on!

Hysteria and insomnia
Stress, neurosis

Please give a better impression with clever use of cosmetics

I made myself interesting again today

Obviously

& from the song chinavision posted upthread

Where is my place?
Where is my home?
Where is my place?
Where is my friend?

Ha, ha, haa

Ha, ha, haa

My friend

only one I have is Albedo, gonna look for some of these others. thanks thread!

<3 u milton

aw

my faves: 666 / Earth / L’Apocalypse des animaux (side 2) / Heaven and Hell / Beauborg / See You Later + outtakes / Blade Runner Espers Edition

at least one great track on everything 1970–1985 but also many many horrifying things

i dunno, maybe i should give dragon another shot—for some reason it didnt click w/ me but if it sounds (even a little) like earth than ill put it on tonight

milton otm about aero being otm about vangelis riding that line between awful and beautiful. wait till you hear the “gangster” skit on friends of mr cairo

kinda surprised there isn’t like a 3CD “best of vangelis” set, it’d be alot easier to just recommend that than be like, “buy any album from these two decades and youre bound to find 3 or 4 great tracks!!”

lol i have a vangelis best of i got for a dollar (i know thats not what you mean but still)

its also p uneven

kinda surprised there isn’t like a 3CD “best of vangelis” set, it’d be alot easier to just recommend that than be like, “buy any album from these two decades and youre bound to find 3 or 4 great tracks!!”

it’d just be impossible to do one that would make enough people happy, because the worst breaches in taste of course are the things he’s best known for, and the most brilliant things he’s done are truly warped — so everyone’s pretty much stuck doing their own trawl

luckily the records are ubiquitous and cheap

I love that Autechre debuted ‘Pen Expers’ live two years before Confield came out as a mashup with ‘Heaven and Hell 4’ aka Theme from Cosmos

at least one great track on everything 1970–1985

If you’re like me, you never remember the bad tracks cuz you skip them. Meaning these albums are ALL GOOD.

And all like a dollar anyway.

2nd disc of the ecent “Blade Runner” OST reissue is marvelous. Will rep for all this guy’s stuff 4ever. Even though there IS some dreck. But outside of a few geniuses who hasn’t made dreck?

this is the only thread I had bookmarked from the great outage