Thomas Mc Nulty wrote: ... are Mike Oldfield's Amarok and Vangelis's El Greco
Ohh my word ... someone else has it!
I would like to add to this Riuychi Sakamoto's pieces in a couple of soundtracks, specially the ones "The Last Buddha" soundtrack. These are, sort of, similar to the vocal passages in El Greco ...
To my ear, the experimentations that TD/EF have done with words are ... sub-par ... the ones with poetry is not have as good as the poem in Vangelis' Direct (the one .. btw .. it's a beautyful morning ... ) which is much more "fresh", up to date, and "honest" and "direct". It speaks for our time better. It does not mean that Blake, Milton, Willie and others' work is not good enough ... it's great stuff ... but the music for it ... is still not "found".
I'm a writer, and have written many poems, and once asked Edgar if I could use his music (not TD's btw) for an issue of the Ygdrasil Journal of Poetic Arts, when I was attempting to put together another "live poetry issue" ... and in the end I ended up using Anthony Phillips and Gilly Smith (Gong), and it went fairly well. My own poetry was totally extempore and live, and (to me) an exploration of what the sound of the music made me feel at that moment. I still have a couple of poems dedicated to TD's music ... but doubt there is an interest for folks here, or TD to hear it ... I would prefer to "hear it" ... rather than "read it" ... since, like TD's music, this is about "feeling it" ... not quite thinking it.
But I have always thought, that the greatest composers of our time, and the most representative of the music time period and changes ... are Mike Oldfield, Vangelis, Tangerine Dream ... and then one can slowly add Jean Michel Jarre, and a couple of others here and there ... to my ear, this is "god's work" and the visions that several decades later we define many "composers" ... and in many ways, I find TD as busy/fast as Mozart, for example. I do think that R. Sakamoto also deserves a mention here, and not only because he has an Oscar in his closet ... he has created some magnificnet works as well.
My greatest desire in life (I'm 58 now) is to one day see Vangelis and/or Mike Oldfield and/or Jean Michel Jarre in concert ... I've been lucky ... I have seen TD at the Santa Monica Civic (1st American Tour), Greek Theater (where the picture of the trees on fire was taken with Lazerium providing the fireworks), then a third time in Portland, Or in 86 or 87 ... and I remember those 3 fondly ... and a lot of this was because I can close my eyes and flow with the music ... and it has always been a special music ...
The other one that I would love to see, also a very interesting composer in my experiential time/mind is Klaus Schulze ... but I doubt that these giants are even capable of sitting together and pat each other in the back ... beautiful job you all have done ... and shared a common hug. This is a mechanical, maniacal and really non-loving era, and even folks like TD are considered old fashioned already ...
You can see Keyboard Magazine and the like ... they are not even capable of seeing the history of the synthesizer and how important these people were in helping develop anything that is now digital and considered ... not good and old school ... and worst of all ... "analog" ... they would never even consider Edgar a good keyboard player ... and probably neither are these other folks ... Herbie and Keith take the stage ... screw the others!
I'd rather TD done their own stuff...I like the re recordings they've done but would rather have all new music.
