Have a favourite track on Vangelis' The Dragon?

This is my favourite Vangelis album (at one time it was Hypothesis when I was most "experimnental" in my tastes). I love the whole thing.







Two reviews of it from PA peeps since they describe it better than I could:

Guldbamsen wrote: Forgive me now, because this will be a very biased review. This was my second Vangelis album, which I bought some 7 or 8 years ago along with the Conquest of Paradise soundtrack, and for unknown reasons it still remains my favourite release from him. I´d just watched the Ridley Scott movie about Cristopher Colombus and felt the music was fascinating, huge and adding to the overall scope of the thing - a magical touch. I was however completely baffled by this monster, and it left me wondering if it indeed was made by the same artist. The resemblance between the two albums is comparable to that of a growling German Shepard and big box of lip-balm. David Bowie has always been called a musical "chameleon", but I honestly do believe that Vangelis is more deserving of that accolade. I mean the guy has made records with all kinds of different influences: Jazz, electronic, symphonic, avant and psychedelic - all of them orchestrated by his highly unique way of knitting melodies and structures together. The Dragon though is a wonderful Krautrock album as much as that sounds preposterous, feverish, misguided, full of bs, insane and totally bonkers - yep, this is Krautrock... The first and self-titled cut is an astonishing eastern journey with drawn out swaying bouncing music, that paints a picture of a Persian bazaar experienced through flickering mental dreamlike curtains. A demented insisting and slightly menacing violin slices its way through a thicket of fuzzed out snuffling drumming, a bass that mimics a subsonic bleating lamb, psychedelic mantra inducing guitars and an intricate woven carpet-like keys utilization by the man himself, and bam! the music is thick like gravy and hypnotic like watching a mosquito buzzing around in perfect squares. I often think of Swedish psych/kraut band Älgarnes Trädgård, when I listen to this track. There´s a similar psychedelic folk sauce going on here, and I simply adore it. Second fire-breathing lizard is a more subtle and calm piece, and I think the album benefits from the rather long piano driven prologue, which covers your open wounds, ripped up by the preceding cosmic onslaught, with a soothing bandage conveyed in musical bliss. When the gentle guitar joins in, it feels like an ice-cream you´ve been holding in your sun-baked hand for far too long, -uneventfully and gently melting down your fingers. I love this track and again there´s traces of the more mellow side of Krautrock, and I´d happily play this to a small bird without the fear of getting piipped at too much. Vangelis decides to end The Dragon with a ferocious adventure in psychedelic tinged fusion, that reminds me of the Dadaist Kraut-jazzers Exmagma and their more robust and elephant-like musical facets. Although it starts out like a folkish tune with skewed acoustic guitar, it segues into some wild n´ frenzy fusion with Vangelis playing some of the best electric piano I´ve heard from the man - often recalling the great Herbie Hancock. It´s truly the bouncing back and forth between these two textures that makes this track. See-saw whoohi - up and down from side to side, and back again! Just remember that seatbelt and you´re in for a terrific ride. Like I started out saying, this is a highly biased review, and largely down to my uncontrolled love of psychedelic music, but mostly because The Dragon was my starting point in Vangelis´ enormous discography. Looking back now, after some 12 purchased records, I still feel this is his crowning achievement, even though he probably thinks of it like he thinks of chlamydia: irritating and there, but you´ve nearly forgotten about it... Beautiful and treacherous like a towering black waxed dragon in lederhosen.

Aussie-Byrd-Brother wrote: Where do I begin with one of my favourite albums? One that I've had for over twenty years, that I still listen to all the time and find it impresses and amazes me more and more each time. Vangelis' `The Dragon' is what true progressive music is to me - a blending of different styles and genres to create something truly inventive and forward-thinking. It's a hypnotic combination of droning raga-rock, psychedelic haze and ethnic atmosphere, full of drama, rising tension and contrasting dreamy passages. The way the acoustic instruments weave around electric guitar and humming electronics truly bridges the past and the future, the ancient world with the modern. The title track is a hypnotic mantra, filled with swallowing gulping bass and dizzying ethnic percussion. This journey to the East is a thrilling and dynamic droning piece, with a rough and reckless Krautrock style as it runs through everything from bolero rhythms, near-Arabic themes and fuzzy dark psychedelia. It constantly builds with lurking mystery and monstrous tension throughout, occasionally breaking into wild violin jigging and freeform distorted electric guitar phasing. Tribal beats, crashing predatory drumming, monotonous acoustic guitar strumming and harsh electronics blur into a tornado of blissful aggression and primal fury. Just close your eyes and be swept away with it. `Stuffed Aubergine' begins as a tip-toeing and delicate dreamscape of gentle electric guitar picking and floating shimmering electric piano. I think of a serene lake, with an inviting and beckoning ghostly female presence far away in the distance calling me closer. It's as if this figure has taken me in her arms where I know I'll be protected from all my doubts and worries, but I'm still anxious and frightened at this new sensation. Waterdrop-like looped percussion soon mixes with commanding strummed acoustic-guitar bliss with serene synth washes and mad bass soloing. Such a wonderful and drifting Krautrock number, that makes for a perfect come-down with just a hint of danger. `Stuffed Tomato' is a ragged, almost sitar-like droning folk piece with commanding deep-throated aggression before stomping in with a thick and crushing Amon Duul-like feel good acid-freakout middle full of hippie vibe. Careening bass, spiraling keyboard solos and murky electric guitar churning tear through a whirlwind of jazzy electric piano and impossibly manic acoustic playing. Play it loud, and this one will totally threaten to overwhelm you. I was initially drawn to the album by that wonderful cover. As a lifetime collector of comic books, the album cover just leapt out at me! I mean, just look at it - B-Movie monster heaven! I'm a proud owner of a pristine vinyl edition, and it holds a very special place in my collection. It's unbelievable to think that this album was never really intended to be released, instead put out without the artists' permission. The fact we came so close to not being able to enjoy this wonderful musical experience is shocking. Although I like many of his later electronic albums, it's his earlier phase as an experimental/world/ambient artist that really fascinates me, as Vangelis was clearly searching in all possible directions for a sign of where to head. This is really up there with his immersive proto-ambient `L'Apocalypse Des Animaux', though where that album is a subtle and fragile thing of beauty, `The Dragon' is a wild and wooly beast flailing about full of energy. An essential part of any raga-rock, ethnic, dark psychedelic folk and Krautrock music fans collection.

Last option for me I'm afraid. The titletrack was my first favorite, tomato second and Aubergine third... and now they're all individually and equally amazing. 

Early Vangelis is pretty eclectic to say the least. I think he was still living in Paris at this time and very much into the experimental stuff. It was a few years later before he moved to England and started putting out all those heavy weight synth albums that defined 'electronic prog' in the seventies. Anyway I voted for the title piece as it's not received any votes yet. Good album but I still prefer those synth releases!