VANGELIS – HEAVEN AND HELL LP – Nr MINT PROG AMBIENT

Vangelis – Heaven And Hell
(RCA Records  1986  NL71148)
Matrix No’s: A2/B2

Sleeve in Nr MINT/Excellent+ condition
– some wear to corners/edges

Vinyl in Nr MINT condition
(there are some surface marks visible on the vinyl when held up to the light but they don’t affect the sound quality)

Evangelos Odysseas Papathanassiou; 29 March 1943 – 17 May 2022), known professionally as Vangelis, was a Greek keyboardist, composer, and producer of electronic, progressive, ambient, and classical orchestral music. He composed the Academy Award-winning score to Chariots of Fire (1981), as well as for the films Blade Runner (1982), Missing (1982), Antarctica (1983), The Bounty (1984), 1492: Conquest of Paradise (1992), and Alexander(2004), and the 1980 PBS documentary series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage by Carl Sagan.

Heaven and Hell, released in 1975, is the fifth solo album by Greek electronic composer Vangelis. It got worldwide recognition through the use of “Movement 3” as the theme for the television documentary series Cosmos. Heaven and Hell was the first album Vangelis composed and recorded in his new Nemo Studios in London, the studio he used between 1975 and 1987.

The album has classical overtones, in contrast with the progressive rock on both the previous and the following albums, Earth (1973) and Albedo 0.39 (1976) respectively. Vangelis would return to classical style work ten years later, on Mask (1985).Vangelis dabbles with choral sections joined with his now typical electronic washes of sound, a concept he would return to in the nineties with his Conquest of Paradise and Mythodea. By now, Vangelis had left behind his electronic-progressive-rock forays. In fact, this album constitutes the first album where Vangelis establishes himself as one of the main figures in the growing musical genre of electronic instrumental and new age, creating a web of sound linking several simultaneous beats and melodic lines of different timbres on his synthesizers.

This album also marked the first collaboration between Vangelis and Jon Anderson, on “So Long Ago, So Clear”, which would continue more fully a few years later.

Heaven and Hell reached number 31 in the UK album charts in January 1976.

Track listing

Part One:

• “Bacchanale” – 4:40
• “Symphony to the Powers B” (Movements 1 and 2) – 8:18
• “Movement 3” (from “Symphony to the Powers B”) – 4:03
• “So Long Ago, So Clear” – 5:00

Part Two:

• “Intestinal Bat” – 3:18
• “Needles and Bones” – 3:22
• “12 O’Clock” (in two parts) – 8:48
• “Aries” – 2:05
• “A Way” – 3:45

“Movement 3” was used as the theme for the popular Carl Sagan television series Cosmos.

“So Long Ago, So Clear” is listed separately on the album sleeve in all editions, as opposed to the other tracks.

Personnel

• Vangelis – synthesizers, Bösendorfer grand piano, percussion, arrangements
• Jon Anderson – vocals on “So Long Ago, So Clear”
• Vana Veroutis – vocals on “12 O’Clock”
• English Chamber Choir, conducted by Guy Protheroe