On Thursday 28th July at 8pm BST we will mark the passing of Vangelis with a special edition of The Album Club featuring his Blade Runner: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack taken from the 1982 Ridley Scott movie.
It has received acclaim as an influential work in the history of electronic music and one of Vangelis’s best works. It was nominated in 1983 for a BAFTA and Golden Globe for best original score. The score evokes the film’s bleak futurism with an emotive synthesizer-based sound, drawing on the jazz scores of classic film noir as well as neo-classical elements and Middle Eastern texture.
The official release of the soundtrack was delayed for over a decade. The first 1994 release omitted much of the film’s score and included compositions not used in the film. A 25th anniversary edition released in 2007 included further unreleased material and a disc of new music inspired by the film.
In advance of the meeting, Colleen will send out a ‘Musical Lead-Up Playlist’ of 10 songs – music that will set the tone for the deep album listening featuring Vangelis’ inspirations and other bands in their milieu at that time.
At the meeting, itself, Colleen tells the story behind the album for about 20 minutes and then we listen to the album in its entirety without interruption following our listening guidelines – phones off and no talking. To be clear, its up to you to source whichever copy of the album you can get your hands on – streaming online, CD, vinyl – whatever it is. We don’t broadcast the album over Zoom as you won’t have a great listening experience.
After the album finishes we reconvene and have a discussion about the album and our listening experience.
Patreon Members and higher tiers can attend the Album Club and also our Classic Album Pub Quiz which will be held on Wednesday 8th June at 8pm. You can subscribe here and don’t forget you can unsubscribe at any time.
We hope you can join us and thanks for listening!
Our events really resonate with people and one of our newest members sent this testimonial after her first Album Club last month:
“I wanted to thank you for the warm welcome and the knowledge there are friendly like minded people across the world out there and you brought us all together through a shared love of music. That is awesome. I have been mostly alone through the pandemic (am single, live alone – and yes do have the requisite cats to complete the stereotype!😂) My 25 + year career has been in events, currently in the West End of London so in my “normal” life I would be out at least 3/4 times a week. That has all obviously completely stopped for me and it has been a somewhat of a struggle mentally, music has kept me sane and Sunday’s event really helped my sanity. I truly hope to meet you in real life at some point to say thank you in person and look forward to engaging in more events.” – Angela
