Customer Reviews
Wonderful! - By: Marlon, 11 May 2008 
The film is a stunning visual masterpiece. The Vangelis soundtrack is simply wonderful to listen to. It really does take you there. After watching the film again (Final cut edition). I found myself going back to parts of the film with the music that moved me. The mixture of piano & synths add power & sweetness to this film noir.
High lights for me was the opening theme as the spinner made it's a way across the city. The Love Theme is simply a beautiful piece of music which builds up nicely. Tear'sin the rain, One Alone, & Fading away.
Best Vangelis release in recent times. - By: Scoregenie, 29 Mar 2008 I too am fed up with Blade Runner geeks harping on about the perfect bladerunner album.
What we have here is the best product vangelis has releasedin recent times. You get to hear some marvelsin their entirety. Such as
'At Mr Chews', 'Deckard & Roys Duel' & 'Mechanical Toys'. The crown jewels of cd 2 is the sublime 'Desolation Path', which is perhaps evidence that some of Vangelis' best work still remains unreleased & is likely to remain so. As far as the Blade Runner score is concerned, everything worth puttingin is here. The bits left out are effective as an underscore & probably wouldnt be worthwhile album material.
CD3 is at it should be different enough from the film & a new work. It isin the ilk of the albums 'The City' & 'Direct', which are the most underated works Vangelis has released. The track 'Spotkanie Z Matka' is subtly haunting & I still find myself humming the melody. The CD is just that, subtle & beautifuly put together without any over the top bombast.
I would say seasoned Vangelis fans would enjoy this product & is great value for money. Those that are more from the Blade Runner camp should also be thankfull & stop taking apart what is a great film & score. Film music is written to support & add to the film & picture & not every single not is suitable for an album. The product is just right & doesnt go into self gratification mode.
Next stop the unreleased music from 1492!
Forget the soundtrack, listen to the MUSIC - By: Richard Miranda, 28 Mar 2008 
In many of the reviews I read here, I see that people seem more concerned with owning absolutely every note of music that existedin the movie (however irrelevant it may have been) than the music itself. Disk three, which is all new material, didn't even seem to interest some of the reviewers, who complain because disk 2 is not an exact repetition of what is presentin the film. My review discusses the music, & the man who stands behind it, not the movie.
Those who are familiar with Vangelis know that most of his movie soundtracks have littlein common with the music actually usedin the movie. That is, Vangelis seems to concentrate more on releasing an album which can actually be listened to as music, & not as mere film cues. This part I always liked. If you want to get a faithful soundtrack of the movie, why waste money on your precious bootlegs? Just watch the movie!! Enjoy the music during the movie, 'cause it's hardly worth listening to without it.
Disk 1 is the same as the Blade Runner Soundtrack, releasedin 1994, no surprises there. Disk 2 is a collection of previously unreleased material written for the movie. This CD will not blow you away as far as memorable melodies, except for track 6, which is absolutely gorgeous. There are other tracks with nice melodies too; however, the main attraction of this CD should be the mood & atmosphere generated by the tracks. They remind one of the unique style Vangelis once had during the early eighties. I think this CD is the highlight of the set.
Disk three is perhaps the reason why I gave this CD set only three stars. I actually like it for the most part. But I don't find it memorable. Sadly, as much as I am a big fan of Vangelis, I think that those days, marked by his remarkable creativity & uniqueness, are behind for good. Let's face it, perhaps one of the reasons why Vangelis no longer releases studio albums is because he has nothing new, fresh or unique to release. You still occasionally bump into some of his recent work, which has that spark that only Vangelis can deliver. Such sparce examples can be foundin themes like "Young Alexander"in the Alexander soundtrack. However, one thing you will find absentin this album, & it has been absentin most of his recent work, is that touch that made his music stand out from the norm, those wonderful surprises that always kept you wondering where his music was going next. Gone seems to be his desire to experiment with sound. And perhaps it's hard to blame him for this, especially since keyboards nowadays come with thousands of pre-programmed sounds, covering such a wide spectrum, that it's hard (if not impossible) to create something that actually sounds different. Also, gone seems to be his uncanny ability to orchestrate music so delightfully & with such sweet, & memorable melodies. Instead, most of his music contains sounds which you've heard around a lot, or simple, overly repetitive, & non-fullfilling melodies. Pianoin an Empty Room is an exception to the above, & is probably the gem from this CD.
Don't get me wrong. I still think this CD set is a worthwhile buy. Just don't expect anything too groundbreaking.
Another missed opportunity - By: drew_m, 11 Feb 2008 
It's great to have some new sections of the soundtrack on CD for the first time, but I see this release as yet another missed opportunityin the continuing saga of the Blade Runner soundtrack. Disc 1 is exactly the same as the 1994 version, so it still has the intrusive dialogue sequences spoiling the music. The "Tearsin Rain" track on disc 2 (under the name "Fading Away") has an appalling electronic wind noise rising & falling thoughout the piece which completely ruins it. Maybe Vangelis is looking towards the 30 year anniversary & is holding back the definitive, clean version of the ACTUAL soundtrack, which most fans want, so that he can cashin againin 2012?
Why release what you've already got? - By: Paul Campbell, 01 Jan 2008 Okay first of all, yes, advertising this release as being the complete soundtrack is bad form.
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 variation of the Blade Runner soundtrack than any other movie, some 3 dozen of themin 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 & 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' & would have beenin 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'! The ones who are whining are the film's fans who simply want the actual soundtrack as it appearsin 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 & the Deck Definitive release.)
Now, mind you, I'm a huge fan of the movie (like most people here I have the 5 disc boxset) & I can understand people's wish to simply have the soundtrack's cues sans sound effects & dialogue, & 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.
It helps, however, 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 & 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 a soundtrack.
Vangelis has NEVER been interestedin taking the exact edits of his cues from a movie & packaging them onto a CD. THIS is 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, & not merely 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 & Alexander, where the tracks are not only shorter - orin some cases even longer - than how they appearin the movie, butin 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 a minute or two long, especiallyin the case of Blade Runner, & 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 & 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 COMPLIMENT the bootlegs which almost all of us already have.
And, for those few who don't owned the bootlegs, please don't buy them from eBay. Members of such sites as the yahoo group bladerunner_soundtrack will happily provide them free of charge.
Blade Runner's film fans are simply going to have to learn to listen to this release as they would an ordinary album; it's clear that this release was meant for Vangelis fans & not Blade Runner's film fans per se.
