Ambient Life (Part 2) Vangelis’ “L’Apocalypse Des Animaux”
An Early Vangelis Recording
After the world-wide success of his score for “Chariots Of Fire,” Vangelis became extremely popular. Naturally, many people began to seek out his older, more obscure recordings and luckily Polydor kept 1973’s “L’Apocalypse Des Animaux” in print.
Originally recorded in 1970 for an episodic documentary series on animals and released as an album in 1973, “L’Apocalypse” is a quietly stunning album, only 35 minutes in length, that became a bit of a compulsive listening habit for me after I’d discovered it.
I became an admirer of Vangelis’ work…not from “Chariots” but rather from “Blade Runner,” which I would see almost yearly throughout the mid 1980s in full 70mm glory at the Cinesphere’s 70mm Film Festival. At the time, however, Vangelis’ actual recording of the “Blade Runner” soundtrack was not available commercially. (The version available at that time was credited to the New American Orchestra and billed as an orchestral interpretation. I knew immediately that these recordings were not the ones I’d hear in the film, and had a hard time loving the album. It wasn’t until 1994 that Vangelis would approve and release an official soundtrack recording.) In my search to find some other interesting recordings by the composer/producer lead me to find a very bad Canadian pressing of “L’Apocalypse” and quickly added the quirky, minimalist and ambient album to my list of quiet-time favourites.
Having a quick scan through the web gives me the impression that this recording has not yet been remastered. The CD still appears to be in print, and available on amazon.com, as well as in their MP3 download section. It’s also on iTunes, but no remastering information appears.
Highly recommended for ambient-minimalist music lovers. It’s perhaps not especially shocking that this recording is almost 40 years old. But then again, perhaps it is.
