Saturday 10 May 2014

Iliad's Themes in Search of a Movie, from 1985



What a wonderful title, right?  I posted Iliad's Sapphire House, which was just a gorgeous gem, and the album called Euphonia with its intricate closer in 7/8ths time.  Incidentally I will delete both this link and the previous one out of respect for this amazing artist who had such a gentle soul.

Here we finally have a photo of the artist sitting in an empty movie theatre.  A reprise of "Beyond the North Wind" adjusts the track only a tiny bit, the highlight this time is the Detective scene that opens side B.  Really it should have been used in a soundtrack somewhere, without a doubt.

The first track recalls the infamous "Chariots of Fire" which I doubt anyone who lived through the eighties could ever forget, it is said that song was played a total of a trillion trillion times (ten to the power 24) through the course of that decade, which is once for every star in the known universe, roughly.  It was never quite clear to me why the radio stations as well as the international astronomical society decided to play that song that many times but suffice it to say I avoided radio like the plague back then, mostly due to the omnipresence of both that theme song and that movie.  I was quite surprised, much later, to discover that the Vangelis whom I reviled as a result of this crime, had actually made some quite interesting progressive rock albums in the early seventies.  Nonetheless, it is thought almost certain that the music critics of the 22nd century will burn his popular material in the new coming age of progressive rock reappraisal that will take humanity by storm soon and finally lead to it being considered, correctly, the classical music of the future...  yeah, right...

But back to Sandy Owen.  How unfair was it that this amazing composer with such a gift for soundtrack sounds, was dismissed over the pop simplicity of others?  If there is any karma at all, I pray for him to be honoured again for what he did musically.





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