Vangelis

Fans of science fiction cinema know well how, over the decades, this genre has had a number of notable turning points that marked clean breaks, dividing lines that, with hindsight, separated a before and an after. The first of these has a universally accepted date: 1927, the year of "Metropolis", the pioneering masterpiece by Fritz Lang, which marks the shift from a primordial phase of science-fiction cinema to a more mature one, not lacking in intellectual ambition.

In the following decades, the genre gradually became more widespread, until in the 50s and 60s (see this link for a themed special on OndaCinema) it turned into a genre of mass entertainment, at times marked by hypothetical alien invasions ("The War of the Worlds"), at times exalting technological development as the cure for every ill ("Fantastic Voyage"), or, on the contrary, warning against it through figures of mad scientists who use science for their own evil ends ("The Man with X-Ray Eyes", "The Man with the X-Ray Eyes"). At other times the genre proved capable of dissecting the deepest fears of those years, from nuclear war ("On the Beach", "Planet of the Apes", "La Jetée") to the hypothetical communist threat ("Village of the Damned").

The second decisive break with the past, and step forward, came in 1968, the year of the celebrated "2001: A Space Odyssey" by Stanley Kubrick, which, together with the Soviet masterpiece "Solaris" by Andrei Tarkovsky four years later, definitively pulled science-fiction cinema out of the realm of so-called B-movies and pushed it rightfully into the ranks of auteur cinema. Even looking at the soundtracks of these two films, one can detect a greater effort on the part of their creators, leaning toward the genre's maturity: that of "2001: A Space Odyssey" isn't original, but makes brilliant, iconic use of pre-existing contemporary classical scores, while that of "Solaris", by Russian composer Eduard Artemyev, is a masterpiece of avant-garde music.

A new turning point for science-fiction cinema and, in parallel, for the genre's soundtracks, came precisely in 1982 with "Blade Runner". With its Dickian reflections and its scenic apparatus as imposing as it is romantic and decadent, Ridley Scott's sci-fi noir would stand for over two decades as the most prominent science-fiction film in the landscape — the only true revolution to follow it would be the Gibsonian cyberpunk of the Wachowski sisters' "The Matrix", and then, extending the scope to television, the one brought about by Charlie Brooker's inimitable "Black Mirror".

The aesthetic devised by Ridley Scott to stage Philip K. Dick's reflections and the ideas of the seminal Chicago author himself (the film is loosely based on "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?") would permeate decades of science-fiction cinema to come, just as Vangelis's music would influence the soundtracks that followed. Yet the soundtrack created by the Greek composer for Scott's film carries an importance, or at least a reach, that is even more far-ranging. Its influence in fact goes beyond the boundaries of the film world and branches out into music as a whole.

Vangelis's impact on subsequent generations of electronic musicians has been explosive, as has his influence on pop music. New age and ambient continue to feed on his luminous synth beds and his percussive inventions, but even more recent genres, like the entire vaporwave movement, draw inspiration from the musical and visual worlds of "Blade Runner" — just think of both the music and the cover art of "Atarashī hi no tanjō" by the Hong Kong duo 2814, direct descendants of Scott and Vangelis's joint vision. Traces of Vangelis's cybernetic dreams populate the output of an extraordinarily varied range of artists, from Daft Punk, Radiohead, Armin van Buuren, Boards Of Canada to even Donna Summer and Jay Z.

Already the leader of the seminal Greek progressive band Aphrodite's Child, Evangelos Odysseas Papathanassiou arrived at "Blade Runner" with a film-composing career already well underway and award-winning. After a string of forays into the most disparate genres — ranging from the 1970 porn film "Sex Power" to a series of documentaries about the animal world titled "L'Apocalypse des Animaux" from 1973 — in 1981 the Greek composer won the Oscar for Best Original Score thanks to the epic, romantic music he wrote for Hugh Hudson's sports epic "Chariots of Fire". But it was precisely the soundtrack for Ridley Scott's masterpiece that made him immortal.

Although a first edition of the "Blade Runner" soundtrack, performed by the New American Orchestra, was released in 1982, listeners had to wait until 1994 to hear all of the original material Vangelis composed for the film, complete with previously unreleased additions and extended tracks. It is specifically to this edition, curated by the composer himself and released by Warner Music, that we refer in this piece.

Just as he had for "Chariots of Fire", Vangelis holed up at Nemo Studios in London to create the "Blade Runner" soundtrack. There, his futuristic arsenal of synthesizers consisted of a Yamaha CS-80, the ProMars, the Jupiter-4, CR-5000 drum machines and a VP-330 vocoder. In addition to the electronic instrumentation, Vangelis and his musicians used a Steinway grand piano and a specially modified Fender Rhodes keyboard, as well as a gamelan (a genuine orchestra of Indonesian origin made up of drums, xylophones and gongs), glockenspiel, gongs, timpani and tubular bells. This mix of cutting-edge technology and instruments with a more ancient feel proved to be the winning formula for achieving legendary scores, ones just as suited to capturing the retro-futurist, noir essence of cinematographer Jordan Cronenweth's images as they were to conveying the ancestral feelings and timeless philosophical questions carried by Dick's androids and the hunter who pursues them.

It was therefore at Nemo Studios that Vangelis received the footage from Scott and Cronenweth and gave full rein to his genius. Not only composing the original score, but also inserting diegetic sounds to reinforce the power of the dark images, pierced by neon and relentless rain, with reproductions of metallic clangs, plumes of smoke and other inventions.

The tracks composed for the "Main Titles" and "End Titles" alone would have been enough to consign the soundtrack of "Blade Runner" to legend, and to shape miles of scores to come. In the first, we hear for the first time the romantic, metallic sigh of the Yamaha CS-80, an electronic whale song that hovers like a ghost between neon and thunderstorms; while the synthesizers of the second, gripped by an almost Moroder-esque drive, underscore the flight through the mountains of Rick Deckard and Rachel, finally free from the rain and the leaden Los Angeles of the future – in this case the images being scored are not from the Scott/Cronenweth duo but from Stanley Kubrick, who lent his colleague seventeen hours of helicopter footage shot for "The Shining".

If the impact of these tracks pulls off the miracle of creating a sonic universe as self-sufficient as it is remarkably coherent with the film's images, it's the variations on the theme offered in the various intermediate movements that turn it into a masterpiece of endless sonic solutions and immeasurable emotional impact. Take "Rachel Songs", for instance. The piano's high notes, the veiled interplay of the synths, the music boxes and xylophones form the ethereal setting in which the siren-like voice of English folk soprano Mary Hopkin unfurls. The emotional complexity and melancholy of Rachel, an android so perfect she borders on and surpasses the human, is rendered in music with searing power and romanticism. When a synthesizer echoes back, laden with the same sorrow and the same tears welling in the eyes, the melody previously sung by Hopkin, we witness the sublimation of the very concept behind Dickian androids (replicants, not by chance).

It's impossible not to mention that "Love Theme" too, where amid solemn, digital layers Dick Morrisey is called upon to lay down a tearful saxophone solo that has quite literally gone down in history. So much so that countless similar tricks are still labelled "sax à la Blade Runner".

In "Memories Of Green", the human condition in the dystopian Los Angeles of 2019 dances to the halting yet romantically forceful rhythm of the piano; while in the languid nine minutes of "Blade Runner Blues" it's the synthesizers alone that interpret and absorb the structure and moods of cotton belt music. Amid mysterious music boxes, melodies and Middle Eastern vocalizations, "Tales Of The Future" plants the profane sacredness of Dead Can Dance within the futuristic scenarios of "Blade Runner". Here it's impossible not to spot a forerunner of the use that Hans Zimmer, one of the undisputed masters of contemporary film scoring, would make time and again throughout his career of the voice of Lisa Gerrard herself.

"One More Kiss Dear", on the other hand, is the extended version of the vocal jazz fragment that Rick Deckard listens to in the sushi bar scene, in which Vangelis has Peter Skellern perform his own credible take on 1940s American pop – so credible, in fact, that it's often mistaken for a genuine classic of the genre.

In short, the path that led Vangelis to great success was slow and arduous, but at a certain point dazzling. A long road, travelled with science fiction in his heart and with the idea of contributing to a world that already had its own literature, its own cinema, but not yet a sound of its own. Consider, for instance, "Hypothesis" and its splendid science-fiction cover artwork, an album recorded in 1971 but released (against the author's wishes) in 1978, disowned by Vangelis, yet capable of demonstrating the (still embryonic) will to open up an original path that, album after album, led to the perfect sound of new-generation science fiction.

If maestro Ennio Morricone was the father of the new generation of music for western films, that same primacy in the field of science-fiction film music belongs to Vangelis. Although theirs are two careers, two sounds and two approaches that are in many ways diametrically opposed, what unites the Greek composer and the Italian maestro is not only their landmark importance in their respective fields, but also their influence beyond the world of cinema – an achievement no one has ever managed to match.

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02/02/2025