Vangelis Papathanassiou: Ignacio

I'd have been in seventh heaven if I'd had the web when I was sixteen, which is about the age I was when I got this album — probably, again, in the wake of getting Opera Sauvage — on the basis of pretty much zero information about what it sounded like, when it was recorded, or the film for which it's a soundtrack. You had to work on tiny hints, such as the use of Vangelis' full name, indicating the album was probably early in his career (not that early as it turns out, but it's been a long career).

Album and film remain obscure enough to be absent from Spotify or We7 on the one hand and YouTube or DVD on the other. All YouTube serves up is a series of homespun New Age slideshows to accompany the music, of which this is the least cringe-making:

However, you can now find out a little more about the film, known variously as ¿No Oyes Ladrar Los Perros? or Entends-Tu Les Chiens Aboyer?, and based on a book by the Mexican Juan Rulfo, via a Vangelis fan page and Wikipedia stub.

The album was released in 1977, but recorded in 1974 or '75, around the same time as Heaven and Hell — which makes sense because it sounds like the same choir features on both. Whatever you think about the music — I'd have to say it's patchy — I love the sound-world that it creates. Not satisfied with synthesisers just because they're new, Vangelis throws in everything from plainsong to exotic percussion. Stuart Maconie's Freak Zone has a really good job recently in bringing many of these resolutely analogue and wilfully weird seventies recordings from continental Europe out into the light of day.

MusicBrainz entry for this album Wikipedia entry for this album Rate Your Music entry for this album Listen to 30 seconds of this album at Last.fm