Vangelis – The Collection

Liner notes:
"Over the course of his long-lasting career, musical genius Evangelos Odyssey Papathanassiou has lived up to his middle name by taking listeners on a wide-ranging journey through music.

In doing so, the man better known as Vangelis has become probably the world's foremost electric composer, with more than 50 albums, several hit singles, countless honours - and an Oscar - to his name.

Synonymous with soundtracks for films and television, his many scores include: Blade Runner, 1492, The Bounty and Chariots of Fire - for which he won an Oscar in 1981. But there is far more to the work of Vangelis, who is driven only by pushing back musical boundaries in his quest for perfection.

A pioneer of the synthesiser from its earliest days, Vangelis was making ambient music before the genre had been defined: New Age music before anyone coined the phrase: Chill-out Soundscapes before we knew how to chill anything but wine.

The collection compiles many of the best-known works from a remarkable career that began when he turned his back on pop superstardom in 1960s hitmakers Aphrodite’s Child, instead, intrigued by the many possibilities of the newly-invented synthesizer, he decided, by blending symphonic structures with electronic instrumentation, to create a unique new sound that, despite all efforts, still defies categorisation.

These two discs span the length and breadth of a solo career that began in 1970 with soundtracks for French nature documentaries, moved on to film and ballet scores and took the profolic partnership with with Jon Anderson from the rock titans Yes.

Adjectives such an “haunting” and “epic” seem to have been invented especially for the music of Vangelis - music that goes straight to the listener’s emotions.

Disc one takes us from sweeping Conquest of Paradise, through the stirring Chariots of Fire to the stark soundscapes of Blade Runner and onwards to the hit-making collaborations with Jon Anderson of I Hear You Now and I’ll Find My Way Home.

Disc two offers listeners to the more ‘ambient’ side of Vangelis. Highlights include the minimalist piano melodies of Memories Of Green and the magical beauty of Ask The Mountains, featuring the angelic vocals of Stina Nordenstam. The album ends with a dreamlike new composition, Remembering, that seamlessly weaves a Sax solo into its mesmeric musical web.

So, with The Collection arriving as London prepares to host the Olympic Games, what better time could there be to discover - or rediscover - the vast catalogue of a composer for ever synonymous with the Olympic ideal of striving for perfection."

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