Mon Jan 07, 2008 1:26 pm by espergritblues
I posted this over on Amazon, but it might be worth posting it here too...
First of all, yes, advertising this release as being the complete soundtrack is bad form.
Now, this is speculation but I think the release of this 3 disc album broke down something like this:
Vangelis's people would have made him aware of the various bootlegs that have sprung up over the past 15 years. (I think it's safe to say that there have probably been more bootleg variations of the Blade Runner soundtrack than any other movie, some 3 dozen of them in fact: go check out such sites as vangelis-rarities for a list of some of the examples.) So what I think happened was this: Vangelis took a look at all this stuff and thought, "Well, if die-hard fans already have all this stuff, or even some of it, then what's the point of me giving them it all over again?!"
(The point, of course, is that it would have been 'official' and would have been in digitially remastered sound, but of no moment...)
So instead of repackaging all the cues from the bootlegs into an 'official' release Vangelis decided to give the fans almost entirely new music.
It's interesting to note that almost all the fans over on the International Vangelis Forum are delighted with this release. Why? Precisely because it's 'all new music'! Most of the film's fans simply want the actual soundtrack as it appears in the movie (in which case virtually all of these fans already have it, in the form of the widely available bootlegs, such as the Esper Edition and the Deck Definitive release.)
Naturally I'm a huge fan of the movie (like most people here I have the 5 disc boxset) and I can understand people's wish to simply have the soundtrack's cues sans sound effects and dialogue, and to that end I would have preferred if Vangelis had removed the dialogue from the first disc of this 3CD release, as opposed to simply including the '94 edition unaltered.
But please take this into consideration: it's pointless wishing for the eqivalent of an isolated soundtrack when, in the entire history of motion picture soundtrack releases, there virtually never has been such a thing as a movie's entire score being released verbatim on vinyl or CD. Why fans feel Blade Runner should suddenly be the exception is baffling.
It helps, also, to remember this: Vangelis has never revisited the soundtrack to any of the movies he's worked on. Blade Runner is the exception. It's interesting to note that nowhere - unlike ALL of his other official soundtrack releases, including the recent Alexander and El Greco - does the legend 'Original Motion Picture Soundtrack' appear on the '94 release, or for that matter this '07 release, other than that red sticker. This is a 3CD 'album' in celebration of the movie, not an isolated soundtrack.
Vangelis has never been interested in taking the exact edits of his cues from a movie and packaging them onto a CD. (Indeed, most film composers, from John Williams to James Horner to Jerry Goldsmith, aren't either.) This, however, is precise what Blade Runner's film fans want. Vangelis will never do this (and precisely because there are so many bootlegs that do exactly that he no doubt feels, "What's the point, you have all this material already?") Instead Vangelis prefers to have his soundtrack releases stand on their own as legitimate albums, and not merely as a collection of cues, to the point where he will often rearrange certain tracks for their official album release. This is clearly evident on 1492: Conquest of Paradise and Alexander, where the tracks are not only shorter - or in some cases even longer - than how they appear in the movie, but in addition they have been subtly rearranged. Both of these movies boast 2CD Complete Score bootlegs. Both of these bootleg releases are inferior to the far shorter official single disc releases. Why? Because they're bland, flat - THEY'RE TOO LONG! They don't stand on their own as albums. Most film cues are only between one and three minutes long, especially in the case of Blade Runner, and whereas these work terrifically within the context of the actual movie, they rarely stand on their own, or even if they do they simply don't flow properly if ran together with the film's other cues when placed onto an album.
Vangelis has always been more concerned with his soundtrack releases maintaining their own sense of cohesion than simply taking the easy route of lazily throwing a whole bunch of cues onto a disc. Sure, this would have delighted the film's fans, but the film and the separate release of the music on CD are two different things, two different mediums.
The majority of Vangelis fans are happy with this 3CD release because it gives us two CDs of brand new music which compilments the bootlegs which almost all of us already have.
Sorry guys, but as for the film's fans per se you're simply gonna have to learn to listen to this release as you would an ordinary album and to take it for what it is -
- forget this isolated score pipe-dream, 'cause it ain't ever gonna happen.