JUNO TO JUPITER

Vangelis continues his collaboration with space agencies, depicting in this occasion the flight of the space probe Juno to the giant planet Jupiter. Then, one would have all the right to expect the customary space sounds collage, but this time one would also be wrong.

The orchestration wisely added to the wide keyboards array really pays off, setting the emotional frame for the trip, just as if the listener was aboard and confronting the loneliness and empty vastness of outer space. A particularly fortunate feature of the orchestral arrangement is to be found in the pulsating sound of the timpani, underpinning the synths & strings textures, and creating a great association between human pulse and magnetic fields perturbations.

Of course, the mythological element couldn't be absent, as well as the seizing of Juno & Jupiter in the roles of the female and male character respectively. Precisely at this point comes into place the collaboration of the soprano, which is a sort of aquired taste, but here works really nice.

Listening to Juno To Jupiter after hearing only the most iconic Vangelis releases such as Heaven & Earth, Chariots Of Fire and the Blade Runner soundtrack and nothing from recent times, you might be forgiven for thinking "Yes, he's still got it!" after arriving at the second track, "Inside Our Perspectives", a mighty synth anthem that just refuses to leave my head and hearkens back to the most imposing, anthemic pieces of Vangelis's past. The praise for this track is well-deserved (in fact, after listening to Juno To Jupiter the first time, despite not having a clear opinion about its quality yet, I recommended this album on the forums based on the strength of track two alone; that should tell you something), but I was sadly mistaken in believing that it sets the tone for the rest of the album because pretty much everything from this point onward falls hopelessly flat.

This is an album that's built upon quite an ambitious concept: An instrumental suite depicting the Juno space mission to the planet Jupiter, drawing parallels to their Hellenic counterparts, comprising a musical synthesis of late-Romantic classical music and Vangelis's old-school progressive electronic music from the 70s and early 80s. What does it end up sounding like? A load of painfully mediocre new age muzak that's fit for the background score of a cheap pop-scientific documentary series on the National Geographic channel. Some chimey celestial ambience to emphasize the beauty of space, some vaguely threatening synth drones to accompany an asteroid racing towards earth or something, you get the idea. The electronic tracks are generic and forgettable, and the lengthy classical passages are just muddy, nondescript filler occupying a void where inspired, intricately written music should exist but plainly refuses to: pure ostentation with no substance. Alright, some of the wordless vocal tracks featuring opera singer Angela Gheorghiu such as "Juno's Tender Call" and "Juno's Accomplishments" (love songs from the satellite to the gas giant it orbits?) are of a bit more merit but offer only a small respite on an album that drags on for over 70 minutes. You won't miss anything important by forgoing a physical release and listening to this on a streaming service so you can just turn it off after the second track.