HEAVEN AND HELL

"Heaven and Hell" is a wonderful album. It really shuts up anyway who thinks that the electronic prog genre requires no skill in terms of instrumental ability and composition. This of course is entirely untrue and the genre is quite sophisticated musically, unlike most regular mainstream electronic music. "Heaven and Hell" also isn't as heavily focused on synthesizers as say Tangerine Dream and I'm happy to say that Vangelis gets to the point quite quickly, although there is some welcome repetition.

"Heaven and Hell" was very difficult to record and once it finally was finished it took and even longer period of time to over come the inherent technical problems facing it. But never the less the album is a huge success and remains one of the favorite albums. One of the major things that attracted me to this album was that Jon Anderson of Yes features on vocals towards the end of the first part of the album. In addition Vana Veroutis and English Chamber Choir also help enhance the album.

The albums begins with part one of "Heaven and Hell" of which the opening section is called "Bacchanale." It begins immediately with an odd sounding synthesizer which is soon joined by the choir. This theme progresses into one killer of an opening. Following this is "Symphony to the Powers B" which in itself progresses many times but is more of a down to earth section in terms of instrumentation than "Bacchanale." "Movement 3" is quite mellow and atmospheric and it works well to set the scene for the next section "So long Ago, So Clear" It features some very nice synthesizers and spacey themes. "So long Ago, So Clear" is my favorite part of the album. It opens with a very beautiful section bristling with synthesizers, soon Jon Anderson comes in on vocals and rest is just amazing.

Part two begins with "Intestinal Bat" which begins with a crash and the sound of bats emulated by percussives and synthesizers begin to sound. The next section entitled "Needles and Bones" features and very strong and almost overdone melody which is repeated many times. It is accented by string pitz and percussion which add variety to the passage. Next is "12 O'Clock" Which begins with a silence after the previous section. It then encompasses the sounds of percussion and various synthesizers until it reaches a peak, and winds down. It repeats this processes again on a smaller scale. After some more doodling the choir and Vana Veroutis come in singing one Gregorian chant-like melody towards start. Vana Veroutis then proceeds to have quite a long vocal solo backed by the choir. Nect up is "Areis" which is quite an intense instrumental passage featuring a couple of strong synthesizer melodies and percussion. Last of all comes "A Way" which ends the album in a very beautiful and spacey manner, great ending.