ANTARCTICA (OST)

Certainly one of his best later albums, not unlike "Chariots of Fire" sonically. Go ahead and lump him in with other New Age artists if you must. Personally, I think that stuff like this gives New Age music some credibility.

After the hit "Titles" on "Chariots of fire", Vangelis proceeded in a similar way to produce another great radio friendly hit: "Theme from Antarctica": very floating, symphonic, ethereal, majestic & emotional, the sound is absolutely crystal clean. The VERY sophisticated & refined overall sound is a bit like the "Soil Festivities" and "Blade Runner" albums. Along with the "Blade Runner" album, it is the beginning of his best created atmospheric soundscapes: the deeply floating, echoed & sustained keyboards sounds occur, like on the "Mask" album. The weak point is the repetitive parts in the compositions: despite the involved tracks do not use the same keyboards sounds, one may consider some of them as catchy variations on a same theme, i.e. variations on the first track "Theme from Antarctica". I find that the album has a rather dynamic & cold atmosphere, absolutely not as warm as "Mask". Nevertheless, it is an excellent album from Vangelis.

Rating: 4.5 stars

Definitely a step up from the previous Chariots Of Fire. This soundtrack has all the cold, lonesome, vast qualities of a massive ice shelf drifting aimlessley around the South Pole.Musically much stronger and the themes blend well in depicting the solitude of the Antarctica. Highlights would have to be ' Anarctica Echoes', ' Song Of White' and the sombre ' Other Side of Antarctica'. A good piece of work from that genius composer Vangelis.

The music on this soundtrack is very well produced, and musically it can be compared to the Oscar-winning Chariots Of Fire soundtrack, which is a good album. But still, I must say I wasn't very impressed when I listened this album completely, knowing three - probably best - tracks in advance. I'll round my 2½ stars down even if it's clearly better than 'collectors/fans only'.

So what's wrong? Is it perhaps as the review on allmusic.com says, that the music fails to capture the iciness of Antarctica? No, actually I disagree on that. The music is atmospheric all right. I haven't seen the Japanese film, but I can imagine Vangelis' music works pretty well on it. Instead, it's the usual fault of the film music: as the main theme, wonderfully introduced in the bright opening track 'Theme From Antarctica', is being repeated in various ways throughout the album, the listener gets frustrated and bored before the end. The second track 'Antarctica Echoes' is however another highlight even if it's just a meditative, slowed down version of the opener.

The rest of the album has a couple of fine tracks that easily fill up the quality standards of Vangelis though not anyhow spectacular, but as a whole, to me this album per se is a bit boring. It's miles from the greatness of Blade Runner or 1492 - The Conquest of Paradise, both of which are among my all-time favourites of soundtrack albums. But their secret lies in the way they were further worked out to function perfectly as individual albums. And this is true about Chariots Of Fire also: if you watch these films and listen to the music on them, those brief music passages have quite a little to do with the album. Now if Vangelis had had the same goal with Antarctica, he could have ended up with another strong soundtrack album.

After the award claiming « Chariots Of Fire », here goes Vangelis with another album containing another of his best known theme: "Antartica".

This opening song is quite delightful, very well known: spacey, atmospheric, and ambient. You name it! It holds a superb and repetitive melody but it is never boring during these seven minutes and a half. Great stuff for sure, it is.

The theme is recurrent and comes back at some other points later in the album ("Song Of White"). I must say that I quite like this (same during "Memory Of Antarctica" but in a much slower mood).

The well named "Antarctic Echoes" is another fine track. It is even more spacey than the opener and should please any fan of electronic prog. So far, this album is quite good and it should reconcile a lot of fans who might have been disappointed by the artist lately.

This album is fully embracing the electronic prog genre; but on the melodic side. It is accessible, beautiful and quite well achieved. Ambient and spacey atmosphere is also on the list ("Other Side Of Antarctica"). What else do we need? Another great melody I guess? You'll get it as well under the form of the fine closing track "Deliverance". It is a great ending for this fine album. As a whole, it is one of my Vangelis favourite album.

Four stars.

Max result with the lesser effort. This time, instead of writing five tracks for the side A and repeating them together for the side B, he writes a single track good for a 3 minutes radio edit and extends it to cover 45 minutes of the same soup with different sauces.

The main theme is not bad, able to capture the icy ambient of the movie. The music was great in commenting the speachless story of a dozen of dogs abandoned in the frozen antarctic winter, but that's all.

A simple and captivating melody based on four chords can't be repeated for 45 minutes just increasing or decreasing the tempo. It can work fine for the movie, by taking different pitches and tempos when they are most appropriate, but not for a whole album.

As Chariots of Fire, this doesn't deserve more than two stars.

One for listeners who enjoy the more approachable and melodic end of progressive electronic music, Vangelis' 1983 work `Antarctica' is the soundtrack to a movie on the same topic. While it's not going to gain the same status or level of attention as his pioneering `Blade Runner' soundtrack, it's certainly not deserving of being completely dismissed or ignored either. Perfectly enjoyable purely as its own work, this is the artist at his most warm and easy listening, with the music, although soft and gentle, never simply becoming bland new-age muzak, and some darker flavours here and there are welcome as well.

The main `Theme from `Antarctica' has soothing washes of synths that lap at the background over unobtrusive programmed percussion, quickly taking on symphonic and victorious themes. Synths rise and fall in a delicate manner throughout the pretty and dream-like `Antarctic Echoes', with the tiniest little electric piano tip-toes. The dramatic `Kinematic' has a skittering frantic programmed beat over imposing electronics, and `Song of White' floats wistfully on ambient flute-like synths before a reprise of the main theme. The synths glisten as if brilliant crystal-like shards on `Life of Antarctica', some darker tones almost resembling Tangerine Dream in parts, and it's one of the more memorable moments on the album. `Memory of Antarctica' is a low key and placid alternate take on the main theme with brief cinematic-like touches. `Other Side of Antarctica' (another refreshingly darker highlight) has a slightly eerie, foreboding, even alien quality, and `Deliverance' closes the album with spiralling synth loops and soothing victorious strains.

Over his career, Vangelis has tackled many different genres and styles, especially fascinating is his early to late 70's period that is full of scattered experimental gems, each more baffling and unique than the last, but all well worth discovering. `Antarctica' is not exactly cutting edge or as genre-bending as those works, but it is evidence of this sort of an artist having completely honed his electronic skills. This is an often hypnotic work, full of movement and variety, making it perfect for newcomers to the progressive electronic genres.

Three stars.