Vangelis – History of Sorts

The news broke earlier today that Vangelis died on 17 May , aged 79, at a hospital in Paris due to heart failure.

Born in the Greek coastal town of Agria in 1943, the largely self-taught musician formed his first band, The Forminx, in 1963 at the age of 20 and followed that with the internationally successful Aphrodite’s Child, who also featured vocalist Demis Roussos. After two albums of psychedelic pop – the band’s debut single Rain And Tears was a top 30 hit in the UK in 1968, it was the band’s third album 666, a concept album about the Book Of Revelation, which made the band a hit with serious-minded music fans, even though they had actually split up by the time of the album’s release.

The musical style of Vangelis is diverse; although he primarily used electronic music instruments, which characterize electronic music, his music has been described as a mixture of electronica, classical (his music was often symphonic), progressive rock,[ jazz, ambient.

He is sometimes categorized as a new-age composer, a classification others have disputed, including Vangelis himself. He called New-age music a style which “gave the opportunity for untalented people to make very boring music”.

He has worked together with many other artist like Jon Anderson from Yes. He also composed many soundtracks to films such as The Bounty (1984) and 1492: Conquest of Paradise (1992) and solo albums such as Voices (1995) and Oceanic (1996) further cemented his reputation and a long-held fascination with outer space saw him work with the European Space Agency on 2016’s Rosetta and he continued exploring his love of space on last year’s Juno To Jupiter.

Here are just some of his works.