Soil Festivities dates from 1984, before Vangelis was working with orchestras. Some would say that it was before he "sold out" or when he was a "real musician," but those opinions are totally subjective. It is certain that this is a different kind of work. The album features five movements, each a self-contained soundscape. Vangelis surrounds a subtle drone with heavy sequences and dense atmospheres. He uses a symphonic synth to create pastoral textures. This is a very accessible album. It will appeal to fans of Constance Demby, Wendy Carlos, Victor Cerullo, and Yanni.

Mask is an e-music symphony in six movements. Vangelis is near his best on this album. He takes the best from his many different e-music personas and creates huge walls of dramatic and hypnotic sound. Vangelis combines symphonic synths, atmospheres, Berlin school sequences, choral chants, and sweet melodies in this soundscape. The mood shifts from bombastic to triumphant to mysterious to challenging and back and forth and in and out. The atmospheres weave through and around the soundscape, never losing the drama. Deep listeners will be on the edges of their seats. This great CD is like a soundtrack with no film.

Portraits (So Long Ago, So Clear) is a set of 15 pieces covering approximately 20 years of Vangelis' career. He is, undoubtedly, the most commercial electronic musician ever. He has recorded dozens of major motion picture soundtracks and dozens of delightful albums. This CD is an accurate cross section of those efforts. Contains two unreleased tracks.

As far as Vangelis' early work is concerned (pertaining to the five years of his solo career), Spiral stands up quite well, although it's almost always regarded as an inessential effort. Although the structures and the overall dynamics of the pieces are less complicated and less sophisticated, Spiral's keyboard utilization is still extremely effectual, even if it does take awhile to get off the ground. The five tracks that make up the album aren't as atmospheric or as elaborately shifting as 1975's Heaven and Hell or 1976's Albedo 0.39, but his musical movement does seem to transgress toward full, complete soundscapes, especially in "To the Unknown Man," the album's best example of Vangelis' artistry. The album is based on a dancer's appreciation of the universe and how it spirals into infinity, a concept which came to him through his own pirouettes…

Deluxe 13 CD box set from the veteran Greek composer and instrumental/electronic music pioneer. Delectus gathers together digitally remastered and expanded editions of Vangelis' seminal albums Earth, L'Apocalypse Des Animaux, China, See You Later, Antarctica, Mask, Opera Sauvage, Chariots of Fire, Soil Festivities and Invisible Connections, plus his collaborative recordings with Jon Anderson as Jon & Vangelis - Short Stories, The Friends of Mister Cairo and Private Collection. The mammoth collection includes all of his albums on Vertigo and Polydor, recently remastered for the first time ever under the legendary composer's own supervision…

Antarctica is the soundtrack to Koreyoshi Kurahara's film of the same name. Vangelis composed and performed all of the music. It is a very dynamic and dramatic set, but does not convey the iciness that listeners would expect. Conveying feelings of angst, isolation, and even desolation, it is actually very good music. It just does not feel like, well, the Antarctic.

Decca Records announces the release of Vangelis’ new album ‘Juno to Jupiter’. The work, inspired by NASA’s ground-breaking mission by the Juno space probe and its ongoing exploration of Jupiter, is a multi-dimensional musical journey featuring the voice of opera superstar Angela Gheorghiu. The album includes sounds from the Juno launch event on earth, from the probe and its surroundings and Juno’s subsequent journey that have been sent back to earth from the probe, which continues to study Jupiter and its moons: 365 million miles away.

Mythodea is subtitled "Music for the NASA Mission: 2001 Mars Odyssey," and it's certainly an epic work. If its aspirations were any higher, it wouldn't even need NASA to break earth's gravity. In essence, it's the focus of Vangelis' symphonic ambitions, utilizing not only an orchestra, but two sopranos and a full choir to go alongside his banks of keyboards. That itself isn't a problem. Epic can certainly be a good thing, and its roccoco grandeur can have its appeal. The problem, and it's certainly one here, comes when things are overblown, and the everything-plus-the-kitchen-sink attitude becomes wearying. After synth space noises, "Movement 1" shows its Mars intentions by borrowing the 5/4 rhythm from Holst's "Mars" (without credit) and overlaying it with symphonic stabs of melody and voices galore. But, and this is true of the entire disc, it goes nowhere…

Vangelis, Jean-Michel Jarre, Herbie Flowers, J. Keating and J. Williams. All tracks are cover versions. Arranged by L'Orchestre Electronique.

This portentous tribute to Domenikos Theotokopoulos (16th-century painter "El Greco") divides its ten tracks among as many separate movements (complete with a disc-closing "Epilogue") and explores them with all the excitement of a day at the art gallery (this concept was, in fact, inspired by the National Gallery of Greece's efforts to obtain El Greco's "St. Peter"). Which means it's very studious, very meticulous, and very good for you, but ultimately the (very few) thrills here are intrinsic at best and not really all that thrilling. Composer, arranger, producer, and performer Vangelis gooses up the action with occasional bombast, but the overall tone of El Greco's classical new age is as solemn and washed-out as a centuries-old painting.

The saga surrounding Ridley Scott's film Blade Runner is one of the most troubled and tweaked film mythologies in Hollywood history. The various cuts, bootlegged unauthorized VHS and DVD versions, different European and American cuts, etc., are too labyrinthine to go into here, but there's plenty available to read if you aren't already familiar with this murky story. Amazingly enough, the film's soundtrack has a similar narrative, one that is dark, full of conflict; it's so complex that even this mammoth, three-disc 25th Anniversary commemorative edition doesn't manage to straighten out. That said, it is a vast improvement on what has previously been released officially. Greek composer and pioneering prog rock and synth king - and subsequently a best-selling composer of film scores - Vangelis Papathanassiou was tapped to write the score for Scott's film and record the soundtrack…

Inspired by the groundbreaking mission of NASA's Juno space probe and its ongoing exploration of Jupiter, Juno to Jupiter is Vangelis' multi-dimensional journey through electronic, progressive, ambient, techno, orchestral, and vocal music. The project features soprano Angela Gheorghiu and sounds from space recorded by NASA.