Over the course of his long career, the Greek musician and composer Vangelis has produced more than fifty albums of orchestrated electronic music, many of them film scores. This is a boon to his devoted fans. Not so to the rest of us, who resent having Vangelis take New Age Muzak dumps on our faces.
Vangelis went the rock route for a while; in a former life he cofounded the Greek progressive rock band Aphrodite’s Child, whose 1972 LP 666 is well worth a listen. But flirting with the Number of the Beast is a dangerous proposition, and Satan soon took possession of Vangelis’ soul. Things needn’t have gone so badly. Vangelis’ very first solo work, the soundtrack for the 1970 French film Sex Power, showed potential—he might have gone on to make a name for himself in the adult film industry.
Instead he took a less salubrious path. He’s released over twenty solo albums and a dozen or so film soundtracks, garnering an Academy Award for 1981’s Chariots of Fire in the process. He has also produced scores for sporting events—his hummable theme for Nathan’s Annual Hot Dog Eating Contest sets my stomach to rumbling every time
On 1996’s Oceanic Vangelis got in touch with his inner seal, winning a Grammy Award nomination for Best New Age Album in the process. This leads me to suspect that the Grammy nominating committee was composed of Christopher Cross, Captain Ahab, Jacques Cousteau, and Blackbeard. Enya never had a chance. In any case, Oceanic is a one-man band affair—Vangelis plays the synthesizers, Spanish guitar, and chimes all by himself, although I suspect some uncredited whales, porpoises and seagulls sat in on the sessions.
The most important thing to be said about Oceanic is it isn’t an ambient record. It’s too assertive. It demands your undivided attention and will lash you with its strings if it flags. This is what makes it so horrible. It isn’t wallpaper for your brain you can ignore like a minor ringing in your ears. It’s faux-majestic orchestral movie score music without a movie.
Vangelis has all the hallmarks of a hack, and it’s there on every one of these songs. You’ve heard the Titanic-school horn and string arrangements on opening track “Bon Voyage” before, and while the throbbing synth-bass line on follow-up track “Sirens’ Whispering” has potential, it’s drowned in great washes of champagne strings and a choir of damned angels. The hackneyed “Dreams of Surf” is built around some Liberace-inspired electric piano and is what you might get if someone bashed Billy Joel’s “Piano Man” over the head with a sack of barnacles. And you’re not spared the synthesized strings and horns either.
“Spanish Harbor” boasts a “funky beat” over which you get every unpleasant smelling item on Vangelis’ cheeseboard, with the addition of a Spanish guitar. I suppose we’re supposed to think it’s soulful and exotic, and by Vangelis standards it is. “Islands of the Orient” vaguely reminds me of Tubular Bells and that scene in The Exorcist where Linda Blair spiders her way down the stairway ceiling. It’s that scary. Indeed the only song on the album that doesn’t make me puke pea soup is “Fields of Coral,” which has the common decency to act politely ambient by sitting in the corner doing nothing, sparing me the bother of impaling it with a pitchfork.
“Aquatic Dance” has a metronomic rhythm a musical chef of taste might be able to do something with; Vangelis bastes it in strings, chimes and a rather creepy heavenly choir, then sets it in aspic. It segues into the schmaltz piano of “Memories of Blue,” which never fails to make me weep over the fact that once a song exists, there’s really nothing you can do about it. Closer “Songs of the Seals” has an Asiatic vibe, a nice melody and a real beat, and might even work in the context of a movie soundtrack. It’s not much to brag about, as the complaining seagulls at song’s close tell us, but it may just make a tiny difference come the day Vangelis is called to meet his maker.
Vangelis produces easy listening New Age shlock, with the exception that most easy listening New Age shlock does its best to tippy-toe around making as little an impression as possible. Find yourself trapped in an elevator for a significant amount of time with most New Age music and most likely—if you keep a cool head and have the necessary intestinal fortitude—you’ll walk out of that elevator with nothing worse than a serious case of PTSD. Find your trapped on that same elevator with the music on Oceanic and you’ll emerge covered in blood and wearing the face of one of the unlucky souls trapped with you during the ordeal. But take heart. No jury in the land would convict you. Unless that is, all twelve members are Montovani fans.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
F
