Vangelis: Blade Runner

21 August 2014, 22:12 | Updated: 29 August 2014, 11:21

Fresh from the success of Chariots Of Fire, Vangelis turned his hand to some much darker material with his second movie soundtrack, Blade Runner.

Though we're fast approaching the year in which director Ridley Scott's seminal sci-fi classic is set - 2019 - it still seems as if modern movie soundtracks, and contemporary music itself, have yet to catch up with Vangelis. 

Composed in 1982 and presaging the ambient music genre that would follow in the wake of house beats by almost a decade, Vangelis's music perfectly captures the mood of the dystopian, rain-lashed Los Angeles in which the film is set. Evocative and seductively melancholy, Vangelis's music is as much a star of the film as the iconic figures of 'Blade Runner' Harrison Ford, uber-replicant Rutger Hauer and the seductive Daryl Hannah. 

The soundtrack was popular among bootleggers after a disagreement between Vangelis and film studio Warner Brothers meant that it wasn't commercially released until 1994.