Search - Vangelis :: Heaven & Hell

More Hell than Heaven

Kevin Maze | Montgomery, AL United States | 06/04/2010

(3 out of 5 stars)

"Two things first: 1) I love Vangelis' music; and, 2) I bought this primarily for the "Cosmos" theme. This CD/MP3 has 2 tracks, but was originally released in 1975 with 9 tracks broken up over 2 parts: Part one had 4 tracks; part two, 3 tracks. The "Cosmos" theme [Movement 3" (from "Symphony to the Powers B")] was track 3, but here is about 13:00 minutes into track 1. And there is other good material on here, but primarily it seems to be an exercise in "progressive"/synthesizer music, and in 1975, that may be what it was intended to be; I don't know. I do know that from Vangelis' music since then, notably "Blade Runner," "Chariots of Fire" and later, this album does not stand the test of time as well. There is some really great music on here; Jon Anderson's vocals on "So Long Ago, So Clear" was a wonderful surprise. But as this MP3 album contains two 22-minute tracks it's often difficult to differentiate between the original intended separate songs and the "amalgam" of these 2 parts; hence, one part of the track evokes a hellish chaotic theme and then switches to ethereal heavenly music, and the "hellish" parts seem to be the dominant theme, longer and more frequent. Again, perhaps it's a "buyer beware" on my part, but while the 4 minute "Cosmos" theme is a part of this album, it by no means represents the overall sound of the album. So if you're a Vangelis fan then you probably already have this album and are fine with it. Otherwise, "buyer beware" because two 30-second samples played here do not give a great picture of the entire 45+ minute run-time."

Forceful and full of impact!

Charles S. Holzheimer | Centennial, CO | 05/24/2009

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Circa 1979--I was assigned to find music to accompany some 9th grade presentation. We were told to find music that evoked emotion. We were digging through a collection of vinyl looking for something, what, we weren't exactly sure.



We started listening to this record and it darned near knocked us over! The almost Gregorian opening and chant-like melody grabbed us immediately. I was deeply involved in music at the time and I remember thinking "It's wonderful. I don't like it, but it's wonderful." I wanted the structure of truly classical music. But for some reason the album haunted me and stuck in my memory.



Several years later I rediscovered Heaven & Hell and gave it a more thorough listening. It has been one of my favorite recordings from that time forward. Some of the more delicate passages were plucked for use in "Cosmos" the ground breaking mini-series by Carl Sagan.



Vangelis was about 10 years into his career when he made this album and about 4 from winning an Oscar for his "Chariots of Fire" soundtrack. In my opinion, this is the keystone work in his library. As a concept piece, Heaven & Hell successfully evokes emotions in the listener. Good, bad, beautiful, ugly, happy, and sad. It's all here and is impressive in its scope.





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