SOUNDTRACK

Artist: Tangerine Dream, Göttsching,
Enya u.a.
P: 1989
This is a compilation from EDEL with some very cool soundtrack melodies from some deleted soundtracks.

Here the last copy!

Artist: Vangelis
P: 1992
Vangelis at his VERY best - not one track can be disregarded as 'fluff or filler'. One of the best soundtracks ever made. Synthesizer and choirs at a monumental base.
This is the soundtrack to Ridley Scott's epic film about Christopher Columbus. The story focuses on Columbus' motivations and the consequences of that on the people around it. All this is brought to life by stunning visuals and a remarkable sense of detail. This movie needed an epic soundtrack, and Vangelis skillfully for filled this task.
The recordings on the album differ greatly from those in the film. Some episodes are identical but much of the music on the album is not actually in the movie, or appears in an entirely different form. Even more music appears in the film but not actually on the album. This makes the album seem more like a studio album than like a soundtrack. Many character themes as well as some passages for major turning points in the film (like the storm near the end) are not represented on the album.
What remains of the album however is not less desirable. A magnificent collection of melodic music, filled with choirs as well as appropriate synthesizers and native sounds this album sounds relaxing and exciting at the same time. It can be counted as one of the favorites amongst the fans.
It is also his greatest commercial success so far. Three years after its initial release it was used as personal theme by German boxing champion Henry Maske and re-released on CD single. This triggered a huge hype in Europe hitting the nr. 1 charts positions in Germany, Austria, Portugal, the Netherlands, Belgium and other countries, breaking many sales records (both single and album).

Artist: Vangelis
P: 2004
Put the saga of history's greatest overachiever -- Macedonian emperor Alexander the Great had conquered 90% of the pre-Christian world before his death at 32 -- in the hands of Hollywood's favorite over-reacher, Oliver Stone, and the result is three-hours of epic blood 'n' bathos.
The soundtrack by Greek synth-score pioneer Vangelis Papathanassiou may be book ended by heroic orchestral/choral pomp of suitable scale and melodic dignity, but they buttress a far more compelling cocktail of primitive martial rhythms ("Drums of Gaugamela") and ancient ethnic-folk conceits ("Roxanne's Dance").
Though his film scores have become increasingly rare since the twin breakthroughs of his Oscar-winning Chariots of Fire and the sci-fi masterpiece Bladerunner, his work here argues that Vangelis' restless curiosity and musical range have only blossomed in the ensuing decades. With the exception of the final, club-targeted bonus cut, gone are his once overt electronics, replaced by a more organic, post-modern sense of fusion that evinces itself seductively on cues like "One Morning at Pella" and "Eastern Path".
Elsewhere, cuts like "Across the Mountains" and "Tender Memories" are powered by Vangelis' trademark graceful lyricism, a trait that helps set this score apart from sword 'n' sandal contemporaries like Gladiator and Troy.

Artist: Vangelis
P: 1982 / 1994 / 2006
For a long period after the movie's original release in 1982, the music to "Blade Runner" remained one of the great unreleased soundtracks. Various theories have been offered over the years for why this should have been - the one that convinces me most is that Vangelis sided with director Ridley Scott in a dispute with Warner Bros over various artistic aspects of the movie, such as its ending and whether to use a voice-over or not. Vangelis has repeatedly stated that he abhors any interference into his own musical projects by "artistic nobodies" from the music-industry so he must have empathised with Scott and the fact that Scott finally got the version of the movie he approved of released in 1993 clearly prompted the soundtrack release the following year. This becomes even more clear from the personal note in the booklet from which it follows that it was Vangelis' very own decision to release the music at this point and not earlier, even adding some new pieces in the process of re-evaluating the movie plus music, a process which is itself very unusual as Vangelis hardly ever revisits past projects.
The movie is based (albeit very loosely) on a novel by cult SF writer Philip K. Dick (1928-1982) one of whose main literary concerns evolved around the tricky philosophical question "What is Human ?". This question and Dick's answer to it (i.e. "Human means Empathy") also form the basis of "Blade Runner" and manifest themselves at various points in it. So on one level there's the actual story with a few action-packed sequences but on a deeper, more relevant level there's the slowly evolving picture being painted of a future commercialised out-of-joint society where real people resort to transferring their hopes and ambitions to artificial animals cq. humans with a constantly blurred boundary between what's real and what's not.
All this must have appealed to both Scott and Vangelis whose contemplative music style appears tailor-made for the visually overwhelming and philosophically uneasy atmosphere of the movie. Examples of those atmosphere-enhancing pieces are both the Main and End Titles and the wonderfully loose 'Blade Runner Blues'. Others denote specific scenes, like the romantic 'Love Theme' which together with the 'End Titles' appeared earlier on the compilation album 'Themes' (incidentally: 'Memories Of Green', a Scott favourite, comes from the 1980 album 'See You Later'). The album fittingly ends with the emotional 'Tears in Rain' which accompanies the scene where the final runaway replicant Roy extends his empathy to pursuer Deckard just before termination.
Some vocals are provided by Mary Hopkin, Demis Roussos and Don Percival and a few key dialogue-samples from the movie are interwoven with the music here and there, but never in an obtrusive way.
As a conclusion: "Blade Runner" is possibly the best soundtrack album by Vangelis - the music, the movie and the ideas behind them certainly form another example of the many-levelness in which he revels.
 

Artist: Vangelis
P: 1988
This is the orchestral version (released in 1982) of the soundtrack, music written by Vangelis, from the movie 'Blade Runner'. Although the Vangelis soundtrack (released in 1994) faithfully recreates the original mood as well as having additional songs and different arrangements...
...the arrangements from this orchestral adaption are just as good and in some cases even exceed the official Vangelis soundtrack!
Specifically, the vocal parts from "One More Kiss, Dear" and it's "AM distant quality radio effect" works very well. Another favorite is "End Title" which has a Tangerine Dream type of arpeggiator/sequencer effect and isn't included on the Vangelis soundtrack. Finally, Memories of Green is just a wonderful arrangement. Whether or not you like the movie, the music is something very special. Very Nice job to Vangelis and to the New American Orchestra! Both versions recommended.

Artist: Vangelis
P: 2007  
All music composed, arranged, produced and performed by Vangelis
Special three disc edition featuring unreleased & bonus material.
One of the best-loved soundtracks in the electronic music canon, the Blade Runner score is up there with the key works of John Carpenter in terms of its range of influence, and thanks to serial fiddler Ridley Scott and his incessant re-cutting tendencies, we now get to experience it all over again in an immense triple-disc edition released to coincide with the five-disc Blade Runner DVD odyssey that's currently doing the rounds.
The first disc features the score as was released on 1994's edition, while the second represents hitherto unreleased pieces and bonus material that appeared in the film but not on the original soundtrack release. The third disc is a special 25th anniversary revisitation of Vangelis' work on the film, comprised of new compositions based on the film. While the gratuitous sax scenes of the original soundtrack might have been a sign of the times, there's a certain garish quality to its usage on the new disc, but that said, it's still very much in-keeping with Vangelis' oeuvre, so no doubt fans will still lap it up, but it feels like an extra feature to the much-lauded material spread across those first two discs.
The foreword by the film's director, and knight of the realm, Sir Ridley Scott heaps praise on Vangelis' work, putting him right up there alongside contemporaries like Jerry Goldsmith and Hans Zimmer in the ranks of great modern film composers, but you'd also have to throw in some props for the amount of widespread public interest stirred up in electronic music in general, as a result of these compositions.

Artist: Vangelis
P: 1981 / 2006
What can one say about this album which surely includes the best-known music by Vangelis? People who have just the one Vangelis album in their collection invariably bought either this one or the equally successful 'Themes'. Both the movie and this soundtrack won an Oscar of course and the first track 'Titles' has since then epitomized the Olympian ideal of excellence through sporting achievement. But the album also has a sort of spiritual feel to it, probably the reason why 'Jerusalem' by quintessential British religious composer Hubert Parry is included. This quality is evident in 'Five Circles', a rather stately piece having a Baroque touch, but even more so in the long closing piece. 'Chariots of Fire' could be described as a conventional piano-concerto - having a very contemplative atmosphere apart from a few lively outbursts. Vangelis (who is an absolute master of the inspired short form) clearly gave this a bit more thought than usual, showing that he can succeed in the long form as well, here aided by some excellent piano-playing. Most of its music wasn't used in the movie at all, in contrast to all the other pieces, which denote specific scenes.
A good soundtrack album and it makes one wish he'd released the similar sort of piano-concerto from material of the later movie 'The Bounty' as well.

Artist: Vangelis
P: 1972 / 1986
L'Apocalypse Des Animaux brings together various pieces supporting the images in Frederic Rossif’s nature-inspired film of the same name. The music doesn’t so much describe the realities of nature itself but rather reflects a sort of philosophical reality. On one level, the association always get is how people in prehistoric times might have viewed nature: sometimes tranquil (as in ‘La Petite Fille de la Mer’), sometimes dark and mysterious (as in ‘Creation du Monde’) but always part of themselves. On another level the music manifests a sort of nostalgic longing back to those times which can nowadays only be glimpsed in the ever-decreasing world of animals, hence the apocalyptic title of the film. Although very relaxing music, it is this aspect of many-levelness (a feature of all Vangelis’s serious work) which sets it apart from New Age music.

Artists: Marco Beltrami
P: 2006
Composer Marco Beltrami (Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines; Hellboy; I, Robot (Score)) picks up where Paul Haslinger (the composer from the original Underworld movie) left off, and lets the audience have it. With his penchant for melodic themes amidst complex action cues, Beltrami soars to new heights and plummets to new depths. Track 12 "Truckin'" is the cue to sample, with its orchestral assault and fantastic seven-beat charge. The album adds two original songs at the end, including a cover of Nine Inch Nails' "Something I Could Never Have" by up-and-comers Flyleaf.