Vangelis - Chariots of Fire / Jean Michel Jarre - Magnetic Fields/Les Chants Magnètiques

I Love 1981 - 12.1 / 12.2
Another double whammy in this week's installment of the popular I Love 1981 series. Not that we like to label artists or anything but here are 'contemporary' musicians and composers Jean Michel Jarre and Vangelis who both published instrumental albums around this time 30 years back.
Vangelis is perhaps the better known opus: the soundtrack to 1981 period flick Chariots of Fire, which went on to win four Oscars - including best 'picture' and original music score - as well as the all important BAFTA. The film's main theme has been used in a thousand parodies and slow-mo sports-related scenes throughout the years. The famous athletes-running-along-the beach scene was originally meant to feature another Vangelis track "L'Enfant" although the Greek composer had different ideas and wrote a whole new theme and film soundtrack.
What was so brill about it was that it set modern synthesiser style music to a period film set in post-Great War Britain, a juxtaposition which was fairly unique, effectively inverting Kubrick's similar trick of setting classical music to futuristic scenes in 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Full marks and top prizes then to Vangelis (real name Ευάγγελος Οδυσσέας Παπαθανασίου), for his immortal theme from an album which remained in the Top 100 for an incredible 103 weeks, fact fans.

On then to Jean Michel Jarre's brand spanking new bilingually titled Magnetic Fields/Les Chants Magnetiques (get the pun?) album. Having made loadsa money with previous albums Oxygène and Equinoxe a few years previous, Jean Michel had invested the cash in loadsa new technology including the new-fangled sampling synthesisers, creating, compared to Vangelis' Chariots, a much more modern and bouncy style for the shiny new eighties. Magnetic Fields Part 1 (all of side one) is a mostly up-beat affair split into three movements with just a slower middle bit to let you take a breather amongst all this new technology, and on side two you're straight into the clattering electro clap-trap of Magnetic Fields Part 2, also released as a single, which brings Frenchy style folk music into the Euro-disco synth-pop age. Gènial! The closing Magnetic Fields Part 5 (The Last Rumba) is just what it says on the packet - a straightfoward rumba rhythm again set to a tradtional-style tune updated to the modern age. Cheesy but it works.
Much is made of the sounds of trains and boats and planes, a nod to musique concrète as well as initial experiments in sampling. As for the pop-beats, I'm pretty sure Vince Clarke and pals must have listened to this while working on Speak & Spell. "It remains a rare case of an electronic composer exercising his sense of humor and humanity," says this review of the album and that's just about right. It even got a good review in pop-mag Smash Hits. World domination starts here.