Four progressive electronic musicians

I hope everyone knows that you pronounce Vangelis with a hard g as in goat. 

verslibre wrote: Manuel wrote: I would add Larry Fast Synergy, a great master of electronic music. Of the four options given, It's hard to make a choice, but I would vote for Kitaro. I consider every album Larry Fast recorded as Synergy to be essential EM, with the only outlier being Computer Experiments, Volume One, but even that is a fine ambient (not progressive electronic) recording.

mellotronwave wrote: verslibre wrote: richardh wrote: I would vote Vangelis for these albums: Heaven and Hell China Soil Festivities Mask Voices Soil Festivities and Albedo 0.39 have gotten the most play from me. I'd add Spiral to the list, minus Voices, and swap China for Direct and there's my top five. Vangelis' final album Juno to Jupiter is excellent, much better than its predecessor Rosetta. Don't neglect Earth his first solo Lp 1973 Vertigo under his full Name Vangelis O'Papathanassiou a wonderful opus very different from the synths paraphernalia he will use later

Earth isn't EM, the only reason it's not been mentioned. Another of my favorites is L'Apocalypse des Aminaux. In fact, I do like it more than Heaven and Hell, so consider my top five revised.

Steve Wyzard wrote: Logan wrote: Steve Wyzard wrote: Vangelis by far! It might be neat if people would list their favourite albums from each artist. I haven't heard everything he's ever done by a long shot, but here's my favorites so far from each decade: 1970s: China 1980s: Chariots of Fire and Soil Festivities (too hard to choose between the two) 1990s: The City

Thanks, I love China.

While I tend to favour the 70s material (Earth, The Dragon, L'apocalypse des animaux, Albedo 0.39 and Spiral especially), I really like Antarctica from the 80s. I'm not very familiar with music he created post-80s.

The first album of his I bought on CD was the compilation Themes (released in 1989). I was very into the kinds of music one would find in the New Age section back in 1989 and the early 90s. Listened to lots of Vangelis and especially Kitaro back then. During my time at PA, definitely Klaus Schulze has meant the most to me of these in the list and is one of my very favourite artists that I really got into over the past 20 years.

Edited by Logan - November 19 2024 at 13:10

^ True, very much so.

Can't have too much Vangelis.

OK: 

^^ I guess my idea of a perfect EM album would be a 20-23 minute piece on Side one and the same on Side 2... I'm less enamoured with 5 minute pieces in this style, but neither am I fussed about anything much longer, as it is difficult to maintain the structure, without aimless improvisations creeping in. For that reason, albums like Epsilon, Ricochet or Rubycon are perfect.... 

Jared, what exactly did you mean when you said some of those Vangelis albums are too intellectual for you? Are they too complex or too classical sounding or something?

Weirdly I love Beauborg even though I generally don't like avant music. I even own it on vinyl. It comes in a gatefold and has some of the most stunning artwork I've ever seen. Invisible Connections is a bit weird but I think it was tailored for the then new compact disc technology. It's insanely quiet but has a charm. The only Vangelis album I don't really like is the one he did for an Oliver Stone film that had Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie in it. Never seen the film and only heard the music once and that was enough. (looked it up and it's called Alexander). It's not that it's bad but it just didn't have anything memorable on it. His last 2 albums Rosetta and Juno To Jupiter are very good though. Worth checking out.