BLADE RUNNER 25TH ANNIVERSARY

IN general I don't like operations of this kind: take a successful soundtrack, include the material discarded from the first CD to fill a second one, then write some new stuff vaguely inspired to the plot and fill a 3rd CD to justify an expensive 25th anniversary edition.

But this is Vangelis and what he discards could be material for more than one album for other artists, and with his composing skills even the 3rd CD doesn't miss anything of the original atmosphere of the movie.

Everybody recognizes, even Ridley Scott I think, that a good portion of the movie's success is in the soundtrack. The story, the atmosphere, it's everything extremely dark and oppressive. Those characteristics are typical of Philip Dick's writing, together with the confusion between fantasy and reality that's one of the recurrent themes of his literature.

Well, Vangelis has been able to underline all those elements with his music and this is the best movie soundtrack that I've ever heard. A soundtrack which of course works better having in mind the movie shots, like Deckard bleeding after having killed a replicant while Rachel (Sean Young) watches him from the other side of the road under a neverending rain. What's better than "Blade Runner Blues" to comment it? Only Strauss with "An der schönen blauen Donau" is effective in the same way on 2001 A Space Odyssey, but of course the music was not commissioned for the movie in that case.

The material in the CD2 is in some cases present in the movie but discraded from the first soundtrack's release, in some cases was just composed and not used for the movie as well, but in both the cases it maintains the dark and oppressive flavor of this pre-cyberpunk movie. This is the good of the 3rd CD. Original tracks composed for this new edition. A discutible choice from a commercial point of view but a great listening pleasure as well. If Mike Oldfield can release a sequel of Tubular Bells', why shouldn't Vangelis add a disc to Blade Runner?

However as I have rated the original album with 5 stars I don't see a reason to do differently for this boxset. The price only, at the time of the release, was the negative factor.