Review Summary: The end of the old world, the birth of the new...
The marks left by Evangelos Odysseas Papathanassiou on the world of music are unlikely to be soon forgotten: a pioneering talent in the development of both ambient music and electronic music in general, a film composer whose style is both immediately recognisable and endlessly versatile, one who together with
John Carpenter and
Giorgio Moroder proved to the world that keyboards and synthesizers were more than capable of creating soundtracks as compelling as any orchestra. He was all that and more, and with a career spanning over five decades and a back catalogue far more eclectic than one might expect at first blush, many pages could be - and deserve to be - written detailing the full extent of his achievements.
Yet somehow that would feel a little off, a little unfitting for contextualising this particular album. You see, L'Apocalypse Des Animaux is a humble offering from humbler times, with Vangelis appearing not as the wizard of the Yamaha CS-80 beloved by Blade Runner fans (this instrument and most others like it had yet to become available) nor as an architect of choir and symphony (see: Heaven and Hell, Mask, Mythodea and others). He was but a young man brimming with ideas, using whatever tool at his disposal, electric or acoustic.
L'Apocalypse Des Animaux is in fact one of Vangelis' earliest works, written and recorded in 1970 in Paris while he was still keyboardist for the band
Aphrodite's Child. The music was created to serve as score for a documentary series of the same name directed by Frederic Rossif and broadcast on French television that year. Unlike his approach on later soundtracks, Vangelis notably composed this without having seen any of the actual footage, which might explain why it feels so powerfully expressive, but we'll get to that later. It wouldn't be until 1973 that it saw a vinyl release, the same year as his non-soundtrack debut Earth. Nevertheless it opened quite a few doors for the young composer, paving the way for future collaborations not only with Rossif but also with one
Jon Anderson of
Yes fame.
The music itself largely falls under the umbrella of ambient, and a particularly early example of it, but it's a generally warmer, more organic-feeling kind than the style
Brian Eno would later champion. From the jovial percussive rhythms of "Generique" (conceived to serve as intro and outro for the series), to the appropriately mournful "La Mort Du Loup", to the tongue-in-cheek "L'Ours Musicien" which contrasts a horn sound with a music box-like lullaby, and to the overall contemplative feel that permeates the majority of the record, L'Apocalypse Des Animaux feels alive and speaks of life; more than that, it feels distinctly human.
In particular "La Petite Fille De La Mer" exudes a strangely melancholic fragility; it's a piece centered around the gentlest touch of electric piano, backed by an equally soft acoustic guitar, with the most distant reverberating shimmer of an organ looming in the background like mist over the sea. There is absolutely nothing melodically or harmonically complex about it, but it's so vividly evocative, so vulnerable, it almost feels like a mere breeze would be enough for the entire scene to shatter into a million specks.
In much the same vein continues "Le Singe Bleu", this time with a trumpet taking centre stage. It never cries out anything but simple, drawn-out melodic lines, yet together with the sparse accompaniment of the Rhodes piano it paints such an authentic picture of loneliness and longing. It's a minimal arrangement but it echoes desolate urban nights just as much as it does the animal kingdom, almost prefiguring what acts such as
Bohren & der Club of Gore would do more than two decades later.
The last two tracks seem in hindsight much more in line with what we associate today with 1970s electronic ambient (by way of Eno,
Ashra etc.): clearly defined melodies and identifiable timbres of instruments are traded for a much more textural approach to atmosphere. Everything is so drenched in reverb and delay that it blends into an ethereal haze that is only seldom broken up by the occasional piano or guitar arpeggio (in the case of "Creation du Monde") or cymbal rattling (in the case of "La Mer Recommencee"). If earlier tracks more directly spoke of life and death, these feel more subdued, amorphous, dreamlike and suitably contemplative for rebirth and healing.
It may seem like a quaint little thing at first glance, and it certainly doesn't sound too much like his most famous works, but L'Apocalypse Des Animaux is Vangelis through and through. It has his use of simple but effective melodies, the willingness to experiment with and incorporate a broader range of instruments and above all else the ability to project such vivid scenes into the listener's mind, even in the absence of any motion picture to go with it. Some may find it funny that the soundtrack to an obscure nature documentary broadcast only on French television might be a contender for one of the best works by a composer so acclaimed and prolific; I see it only as further confirmation of his dedication to his craft and of how much of a visionary he was to create this in 1970.
