Blade Runner Official Soundtrack - Vangelis

Track list:

1. Main Titles
2. Blush Response
3. Wait For Me
4. Rachel's Song
5. Love Theme
6. One More Kiss, Dear
7. Blade Runner Blues
8. Memories Of Green
9. Tales Of The Future
10. Damask Rose
11. Blade Runner (End Titles)
12. Tears In Rain

Running time: 57 minutes
Released: 1994

What to say about this? Blade Runner has been a favourite movie of mine since I first saw it (I don't really watch many films, mind), and Vangelis's iconic soundtrack is a major part of that. I am surprised at the release date of 1994, but a quick Google suggests that the soundtrack released along with the film in 1982 was not this one.

The Main Titles is overlaid by Deckard's search for the animal scale, then you get the sparkly breaker, the tinny shimmer and then the long drawn out synth notes. Far more hopeful than the depressing rain-soaked city-scape they accompany, but certainly infused (if only by association) with that sense of wonder and weirdness. I have been playing Cities: Skylines recently, and could imagine playing along to this whilst building a high rise district.

Blush Response has the dialogue from when Deckard first meets Rachel. Voight-Kampf for short and all that. When the speech fades that electric melody kicks in and shivers go up my spine. It really is quite astounding how well this holds up 30 years on. It is on the one hand so incredibly dated - the synths are very very eighties - but on the other utterly timeless. The percussive base could come out of modern electronica, snappy and tinged with darkness. The fact the movie is a classic (I almost added "cult" but that would be a disservice) that stands up in many ways certainly helps keep the soundtrack feeling fresh rather than tied to its time. I am less than wild about how the track ends and fades over into Wait For Me, but once the transition is complete the new track is a gorgeous change of tone. Softer and gentler - it is pretty much the quintessential Vangelis track. It could come from 1492, or Voices or any number of his releases if it wasn't part of this one. Solid central theme, loose movements around it, layers of synths with hidden depths - its easy to overlook the horns here in places, for instance. Its just wonderfully peaceful. 

I am surprised and disappointed by how few of the tracks I can recall musically from title alone. Rachel's Song drew a complete blank for me even after it started, until the voice enters the fray. Used as instrument not as lyrical conduit it has a haunting effect. The track as a whole is mournful, slow and emotional. I don't recall its usage. I am suddenly feeling lonely. It has absolutely nothing to do with the painfully isolated saxophone on Love Theme at all, no. I suppose if I squint I can see this being a soft and loving piece, but it feels more paean to lost love than a celebration of an existing one. When the sax fades away the sparse and starry feel of the theme continues that lonely sense, the notes twinkling like in a big open night sky before a spooky edge emerges to add tension. Love is about the furthest thing in my visceral response to the track. But there is tenderness there, hence the see it if I squint, and I suppose it plays to sleazy late night bars post-closing in 40s-50s, a couple sat along at the bar or in a booth in a closed club. A stretch though.

I have always loved One More Kiss. The wandering piano, the pedestrian strumming, the slightly-too-high feel to the singing of this song just create a lovely if crumbling image of a utopia out of reach. It is incredibly fitting in more ways than one.

It is replaced by Blade Runner Blues. Musically this has very little in common with Blues. It is very blue though... plaintive (a word I feel I probably overuse in these posts, but one I rather like) to the point of making my hairs stand on end, slowing down the evening which has passed far too quickly, and without me having any proper food. Too late to think of that now, though... and I have the wonders of working long to look forward to tomorrow too. Yay. The piece of music is an interesting ramble, perhaps most reminiscent of Soil Festivities amongst Vangelis' other works. I find it hard to listen to and concentrate on too much, better as background music, and yet almost 9 minutes pass without a dull moment. Quite something. It smoothly transitions into another sad piece, the doleful (I looked up synonyms for plaintive, alright!) tone of these tunes complementing the tumbledown, shabby city whose images they belong with, a pairing that is further enhanced by the whirring and beeping sounds.

I had forgotten just how dark some of this album is. There is nothing peaceful about Tales of the Future, an echoing, modulated vocal almost screeching out with the effect of nails on a chalkboard. This turns what would be an atmospheric but forgettable backing track into an electric but threatening number. I have no idea what is being said, if anything and so it is just the harshness of the intonation that sticks with me.  The straining strings that begin Damask Rose are as potent now as they ever were. Along with the preceding track these two seem to cover the "ethnic" angle of life in the LA of 2019 that is depicted, but it is otherwise very weak in comparison with the rest of the disc.

I have, in the past, fallen asleep listening to these tracks, only to be jolted awake by the end titles. I don't say that to disparage it at all. They are anything but boring. Here again they jolt me. The fast pace is anathema to what has been before and the timpani have a sense of purpose that re-enforce that. The tone is so different to the rest of the soundtrack, but is perfectly suited to the situation at the end of the film with Deckard and Rachel to be on the run. It has a real tension to it which is not something you automatically associate with end titles, where in most cases things have been resolved away from the tense, for better or worse.

Rutger Hauer's classic monologue is an integral part to Tears in Rain, our final tune. I love the sparse melody behind his lines here and the unexpected strains of hope in the composition, at odds with almost all that went before. It is a quiet ending, a postscript really, but it is an affirmative one that changes the take-away emotion from the listen quite dramatically. The running order looks off at first, to have the end titles not close the soundtrack, but it is an inspired choice, and precisely the kind of small detail that makes you want to hear the thing again almost straight away. I really like this disc.

And She Closed Her Eyes - Stina Nordenstam

Track list:

1. When Debbie's Back From Texas
2. Viewed From The Spire
3. Crime
4. Fireworks
5. Proposal
6. Little Star
7. Hopefully Yours
8. Murder In The Mairyland Park
9. I See You Again
10. So This Is Goodbye
11. Something Nice
12. And She Closed Her Eyes

Running time: 49 minutes
Released: 1994

A quick change in direction now, to Scandinavia and to quiet female vocals and a very different sonic landscape. I have no idea what made me decide to buy this album, but Amazon tells me I bought it in 2007, some 13 years after its release. I do not have anything else by this artist, nor recall any other factoids which suggest why I might have thought the purchase was a good idea. From that point of view this is one of the most random things I own. When in doubt, blame LastFM. I do, however, have memories of at least three of the tracks, and remember really liking at least one, so I am looking forward to revisiting it now.

The start is an odd one, light strums of a guitar and a strangled, muted and razor thin vocal that is almost childlike in delivery. The song only gets musical at the chorus; it is a very odd way to open an album - not unpleasant, just a little... offbeat. The soft vocal is definitely a feature and it gives the impression of innocence and shyness as it continues into the next song. Viewed From the Spire is the song I remember loving, a light jazzy number that makes good evening background - you could see it playing over a panning cityscape, night lights on, waterfront view. Cliché-tastic, but a nice, simple song. I do not find it leaving much of an impression this time though.

There is a really strong tone imparted by the vocal style here - it is such that it needs a fairly slow, sparse accompaniment to not be overwhelmed and that shapes the types of song that can be crafted. In practice, what that means is that this is a very chilled album. Everything happens in slow motion and without wishing to crash into your day. I find it does not make good listening but I like what I hear - if that makes any sense at all. Yes, I am only 3 songs in, but the pattern is firmly established and if/when it gets broken it will be interesting. Fireworks begins with a much stronger guitar line - solo, and still slow, but recorded louder - until the vocal comes in and the music is dialled down on volume again, the use of sampled seabirds (or so it sounds like to me!) lend a lazy summer holiday vibe. I think I used this phrase before somewhere, but the lack of any real confidence in the singing (maybe because second language?) and the simple, repetitive patterns of the music invoke the "friend tooling around with a guitar in the corner" image. There are flashes of greater arrangement from time to time, but most of it to date has been simple acoustics front and centre.

Oh, that was unexpected; Little Star goes all, erm... something on us. Sudden harmony in the chorus that actually makes for quite a nice little sound but out of place with what has gone before. I am struggling to keep going though - two nights of poor sleep, waiting for a coat of paint to dry before I can apply another, slow sleepy music is not what the doctor ordered to keep me awake and raring to go. None of what I am hearing is bad, not much of it is particularly good. There is nothing objectionable about any of these songs, they are too simple in their construction for that; it does make them not particularly good at promoting active engagement though. I sit here considering whether to cut the whole lot. I do not have much like this, and it definitely has its place, but if all it makes me think is "nice background to tune out" then why keep it?

I like it, but I do not want to listen to it. That is an odd sentence to type, but it is true.

There is some interest in the construction of the tracks, but mostly the appeal is in the overall ambience it projects and shares with its audience. At different points I have had thoughts of Leonard Cohen and of Enya in the design of the tracks (the delivery has nothing close to either) and I think if I could bend my ear to pay attention to the almost whispered lyrics there might be some more to dissect there. There is a sense of melancholy that hangs over one or two tracks (the trumpet on I See You Again is a prime example) but it still manages to be too... nice. Pleasant. Damned with faint praise again.

Ultimately the paucity of my output here, the fact I have been staring at the screen for 2 songs without typing anything is pretty damning. I cannot see a justification for keeping this if it cannot incite a response. Unlike after noting other casualties of this process, I do not feel entirely comfortable with this decision for reasons I cannot quite articulate, but the decision is made. I cannot picture myself listening to this album again, so there is no point keeping it. Whilst it fills its niche and I do not have anything to put there alongside it, I think that the points where I was most engaged moved the theme towards an area where I do have stronger material in the bank.