HYPOTHESIS [AKA: VISIONS OF THE FUTURE]

The sympathetic 1970's sci-fi themed album cover picture gives a quite misleading impression of the style of the music to be heard on this record, released without the authorization of Vangelis. Instead of cosmic music we get here quite wanna-be elitist Hammond and violin driven jazz jams in two bit over sixteen minutes lasting doses, recorded at some obscure studio and sold to markets by moneymakers uninterested of artists rights to their work. There are many weird elements in these musical outbursts, but they don't really irritate but rather amuse me. For example, the album starts with a very monotonic simple note being played in different volumes and with weird rhythm. Later the tunes start to wander off from the eight-tone scales creating very schizoid feelings. If you only like the more melodic and accessible works of Vangelis, then this record may be a disappointment, but if you're interested of the different phases of his career, then this is truly a quite unique possibility to voyeur inside historic visions from his sealed recording studio.