Niki N. Phaser

Vangelis’ career is one of many interesting contrasts and considering that he started making music at the age of four, it’s only natural that he explored quite a few genres before becoming the synth-guru he is known today. Less famous than Aphrodite’s Child, his international successful band with Demis Roussous, is his first musical pack, The Forminx, which were the Greek version of The Beatles’ craze, that swept pretty much the whole world and bred countless clones, one (or more) for each country. The Forminx were quite a hit in 1960′s Greece, after seducing the youth with their catchy rock’n'roll tunes and innocent schlagers. In the latter category, Love Without Love holds an honourable place. The English lyrics sung with a bit of accent, the strange choice of words here and there (”You understand me so much”), Toto’s trumpet, they all provide Love Without Love with the 60′s charm of European schlagers. But beyond that, this is a very well done piece of music, that doesn’t conjure up laughs, but a real emotional response in the listener and hypothetically ‘translated’ into contemporary music production, it would prove to be a masterful tearjerker ballad.

LISTEN TO Love Without Love

From all the other arts, music could best be compared to painting. A painter is able to communicate emotions through the images he creates. Sometimes, these are very complex, filled with all sorts of details, shades and colours and sometimes, they are very simple, just a few lines and yet they are still as strong, if not even more. In this respect, songs are very similar to paintings. Some are multilayered, with all sorts of sounds an instruments filling the sonic space, while others are very minimal, played on one instrument or composed of one melodic episode. The music of Vangelis is a good way of exemplifying this theory. He has plenty of tracks that use dozens of sounds and create an universe which offers something new to discover at every listen, but he also has very simple compositions which are very effective in creating moods.

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