Customer Reviews

Albedo 0.39

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My credentials: Countless hours of listening to electronic music since I was a child.

My favourites: Klaus Schulze (the 70's analog albums), Tangerine Dream (the 70's analog albums), Jarre (the first 3 albums), Vangelis (the 70's analog albums).

The favourite of my favourites(of the lighter tone space music): Albedo 0.39 and Spiral by Vangelis

Because a review is not helpful if you dont know the taste of the reviewer. I think that the above comments will give you a hint.

This album is a recording that belongs to the highest achievements of music as a whole. It is a treasure and I am glad that I was fortunate enough to grow up in an environment that appreciated this kind of music. Vangelis explores the universe with this music and all listeners around the world follow him in a journey through creation, evolution and nucleogenesis. Carl Sagan used this music for his popular TV series "Cosmos", a great influence for my point of view of the world and probably one of the reasons that I became a particle physicist!

As I have written in another review for Tangerine Dream, Vangelis is not only a musician. He is a researcher. His studio is not only a music studio but an experimental lab. It is not far from the accelerators that physicist use to unveil the laws of the universe. They do it with mathematics, Vangelis does it with analog synthesizers. It is the same thing. Another thing that adds up to the brilliance of the album and to the musical genius of Vangelis is that he was among the first to explore this kind of technology. He was at the forefront of this "research". Not only he mastered it well but he became the world leader in space music.

I really dont have words to describe this brilliant, inspiring, captivating music. No one deserves to be called a music lover if he or she has not listened to this album (a rather strong statement but its true).

P.S. This review applies to both Albedo 0.39 and Spiral because these 2 albums comprise a musical entity of Vangelis work (and not because I want to repeat myself).

One reviewer here stated that Vangelis is comparable with Mozart and Beethoven and that he is the greatest composer of the 20th century. I cannot quite agree. Vangelis' composing does not have the degree of sophistication and refinement that the music of Mozart and Beethoven possesses and also the music of the best contemporary "classical" composers, such as Stockhausen and Boulez, just to name two (the former is also one of the most important pioneers of electronic music, see for example his Gesang der Juenglinge (1956) and his Kontakte (1960), and has created awe-inspiring synth music as well, such as Oktophonie (1991) - all those works are available at stockhausendotorg).

Vangelis' composing in Albedo 0.39 at times - though not always - seems a bit coarse, abrupt and when it comes to changing keys, simplistic (there should be more modulation involved) and a tad too obvious (arguably, the often maligned but in my view also great Chariots of Fire, for example, is more mature in that respect). However, his craft of composing is sufficiently impressive such that in connection with his truly awesome musical inspiration, the sheer power of his sonic imagination, his innovative and soulful use of synthesizer timbres that also convincingly adapts these to the diverse development stages of a given track, and his astonishing mastery of a great variety of styles, Albedo 0.39 becomes a fantastic and rewarding musical experience. The combination of above virtues also clearly makes Vangelis one of the greatest electronic musicians.

Moreover, the sometimes found simpleness of presentation of musical ideas (there is enough satisfying complexity as well) by Vangelis in Albedo 0.39, rather than routinely being just simplistic, often seems to be the result of a superior musical mind that knows that appropriate simpleness may be useful to achieve a powerful emotional effect. The abrupt transitions in the music and the few sudden - even slightly naive - outbursts of climactic, glorious or triumphant tone (on occasion they seem to symbolize moments of star birth) can be remarkable in their power, and sometimes the sudden transitions in the music appear to be sheer genius, such as in the track Alpha.

In this track of moderate tempo Vangelis paints boldly with broad brush strokes, presenting the original theme and counterthemes to it in varied and inspired ways, with the variations either dropping in suddenly or - towards the end - smoothly developing from the previous material. The large-scale build-up of this 6-minute-piece, easily going from a quiet, delicate "ticking clock" atmosphere to a glorious, free-flowing climax, is simply astonishing. The build-up is able to sustain unerring, powerful directionality over the very diverse stages, a directionality that is also aided by the seamless integration of the solidly driving rock rhythm into the tension of development.

As pointed out by others, the range of music on Albedo 0.39 is huge. You get quality synth-pop (Pulstar; I love those chords ferociously slashing through the music), jamming jazz-rock (Main Sequence), fast-paced and exciting power-rock where the thematic/melodic lines chase with high speed (Nucleogenesis 1 and 2), the above somewhat ballad-like Alpha, and a few quiet pieces that partially show Eastern timbral and melodic influences (especially Freefall).

I agree with many reviewers here that Albedo 0.39 is a most important and impressive work of electronic music. And highly enjoyable to!

Two more points:

1. Vangelis' playing of drums and percussion, though maybe not wizzard-hand virtuosic, is musically just awesome. Always the right and amazing accents.

2. Two passages in Albedo 0.39 sound eerily similar to two highly characteristic and very unique passages in Bruckner symphonies, in # 3 (1889 version) and in # 6 (1881). Compare Pulstar 2'52" to 3'10" with 11'08" to 11'28" in the Karajan recording of Bruckner Symphony 3, 1st movement and Nucleogenesis Part I 5'13" to 5'36" with 13'26" to 13'52" in the Karajan recording of Bruckner Symphony 6, 1st movement (the magical soft treatment of the main theme in horns and trumpets leading to the final climax of the coda; the Karajan recordings of these symphonies are the ones to get).--Are these striking similarities pure coincidence?

Vangelis, one of the biggest names of electronic music, has always been a very frustrating figure to me. He'd release some fantastic albums that just simple amazes me, and some truly wretched albums. For me, Albedo 0.39 is simply one of the greatest electronic albums I have ever heard! The ever overrated Chariots of Fire is absolutely nothing compared to this gem (in fact I'm pretty sure some people are turned off by Vangelis because of Chariots of Fire - don't judge all his works by that soundtrack album). Except for the Aphrodite's Child albums, Albedo is by far his more rock oriented album. The music here is all upbeat and very easy to get in to. Some of these songs might be familiar to you if you watched Carl Sagan's Cosmos, as "Pulstar" and "Alpha" were featured on that series. The album is also full of killer jamming as well, which more than demonstrates Vangelis was really enjoying himself big time on this album. Plus I love how the album ends with the title track which includes spoken, educational dialog about the Earth and its features (like diameter, distance from sun, and of course, its albedo). So forget Chariots of Fire, if you want real Vangelis, you must have Albedo 0.39, even if you're not much for Vangelis.

Vangelis recorded this hystorical album in 1976. One of the very first recordings at Nemo, he's brand new home-studio - at that time - in Paris, the album has several important performances that latter showed Vangelis as a genius - neglected by his time, although. It contains songs that estabilished Vangelis as one of the greatest composers/performers of his time, not only including classics like "Pulstar" and "Alpha", but experiments, like the spacial title-song "Albedo 0.39", including original voices from NASA astronauts, during space trips. "Albedo", in physics, names "the capacity of reflection of a subject", where 0.39 or 39% stands for the Earth's albedo. This album is a "must" for not only for the Vangelis' fans, but to anyone interested on an outstanding new-age piece of art.

On this album, "Alpha" is the main theme song for the docu-drama "Death of a Princess" about a Saudi Royal Princess and this song was also part of Carl Sagan's Cosmos television series. This song alone is worth the purchase of the album

I know some people prefer his orchestral and choral mush but give me this side of Vangelis any day. This is by far his most free and creative album. No constrictions of compositional niceties cramping his work here. Jazz, rock, electronica. This is for me his most exciting album; it gets your pulse racing rather than merely tickling the intellect. I prefer the short version of Pulstar from the vinyl EP but this version still thrills.

I just wish he'd produced more albums of this sort.

This 1976 release by Vangelis appears to be a favorite amongst prog fans. As a prog fan myself, I enjoy this album because the music is very exciting, with great drumming (by Vangelis no less) and dramatic flourishes on banks of synthesizers. Although the dreamier, spacier tracks on Albedo 0.39 are enjoyable, I also like it when Vangelis "cuts loose".

Vangelis plays all instruments on this album including bass guitar, various bits of percussion, a full drum kit, xylophone, and a gamelan (on Freefall). Although the exact synthesizers used on the album are not listed, it is likely that (based upon what I have read) some combination of the following synths was used: Minikorg 700S; Roland SH-1000; Roland SH-3A; Korg 800 DV; ARP Odyssey; and ARP sequencer. Non-synth keyboards that I can make out include pipe organ, Rhodes electric piano and acoustic piano. Found sounds on the album include recordings of the speaking clock and conversations between astronauts taken from the Apollo moon landing.

Vangelis really plays up a storm on this album and his drumming is pretty darn good. As is the case with his albums, he creates a number of moods with loads of keyboards and synthesizers - speaking of which, his use of sequencers on this album reminds me somewhat of Larry Fast's work around this time.

The nine tracks on the album range in length from 1:45 to the excellent two-part Nucleogenesis suite (a little over 12 minutes in length). The moods on the album range from deeply haunting and sad to vigorous and frenzied - I have to say that Albedo 0.39 features a bit more in the way of dynamic contrast than some of his other albums. Overall, there is a sweeping, almost symphonic grandeur to this album that I find very appealing (Alpha is a fine example of this).

All in all, this is an exceptional album by Vangelis and is highly recommended along with Opera Sauvage (1979) and Chariots of Fire (1981).

My first exposure to Vangelis was in 1978 when my mother brought this album home from vacation in Los Angeles. I was an 11-year-old still entranced by the Star Wars craze and I found the album utterly fascinating. It was avant garde compared to the mainstream music of the time, but that's what made it more compelling. I love the dynamic blend of electronic harmonies, such as those found in Pulstar and Alpha. Mare Tranquillitatis makes you feel like you're on the Moon, with actual excerpts of some Apollo transmissions in the background. The lullaby-like melodies of Sword Of Orion put one in a trance. The title track, Albedo 0.39, is planetarium music. In the background, a man states facts about the Earth, such as maximum distance from the Sun and length of the tropical year. . . interesting. By the way, Albedo is the ratio of reflectivity, the percentage of light and radiation that strikes a planetary body that is reflected back. Earth's is 0.39 or 39%

The problem with this album is that it comes on the heels of the previous and very strong "Heaven and Hell", which is one of Vangelis's high-points. That album really set a standard for this sort of soundtrack-ish material, and as such, anything following it is like to appear diminshed by comparison. But then again, some of what is here is really weaker, such as the title track, and the reliance on the Greenwich talking clock that occurs at a couple of places really seems a bit mawkish. And overall, the composition work here appears to be a bit off of "Heaven and Hell"'s mark...but then, that really was a masterwork piece, and certainly a difficult act to follow. But the performances here are, once again, top-notch from one of the best synthesists of the 70s and 80s. Well worth picking up.

If you like newage music, specially the kind of newage music that sounds like space music or If you are one of this guys that see the space with your telescope and at the same time, you are listening a proper new age song for the astronomical view, you must buy this album.