''See You Later'' is an album by the Greek electronic composer

Vangelis Evangelos Odysseas Papathanassiou (, ; 29 March 1943 – 17 May 2022), known professionally as Vangelis ( ; , ), was a Greek musician, composer, and producer of electronic, progressive, ambient, and classical orchestral music. He composed ...

, released in November 1980. It breaks quite violently with the style he employed in the late 1970s and later, relying much more on vocals and being more experimental and returning (in many respects) to his early 1970s work like ''

Earth Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to Planetary habitability, harbor life. This is enabled by Earth being an ocean world, the only one in the Solar System sustaining liquid surface water. Almost all ...

'' or '' 666''. It was never released in the United States, until it was remastered in 2016 as part of the ''Delectus'' boxset.

Overview

''See You Later'' is Vangelis' most wide-ranging work of the 1980s, with more radical musical and lyrical themes than are found in his other albums. The

concept album A concept album is an album whose tracks hold a larger purpose or meaning collectively than they do individually. This is typically achieved through a single central narrative or theme, which can be instrumental, compositional, or lyrical. Som ...

is bleaker than most of his records, incorporating negative and satirical intonations of a dystopian future. Subjects touched on include funerals, masks, and ready-to-wear and ready-to-eat things. The lyrics are written by Vangelis in English, French and Italian; they use electronic terminology and incorporate references to lost love, and the downfall of humanity due to the influence of technology. The title track lyrics say "See you later then... alive or dead". Track "Suffocation" was inspired by the Seveso disaster in Italy. The album's sleeve shows an ice-covered ocean with a young woman wearing sunglasses to protect her eyes; the image uses optical compression in the horizontal axis. The inner sleeve is also disturbing, displaying a character seated in a greenhouse holding a lifeless child in its hands, both wearing eerie-looking gas masks.

Instruments and style

Vangelis plays all instruments:

synthesizer A synthesizer (also synthesiser or synth) is an electronic musical instrument that generates audio signals. Synthesizers typically create sounds by generating waveforms through methods including subtractive synthesis, additive synthesis a ...

electric piano An electric piano is a musical instrument that has a piano-style musical keyboard, where sound is produced by means of mechanical hammers striking metal strings or reeds or wire tines, which leads to vibrations which are then converted into ele ...

grand piano A piano is a keyboard instrument that produces sound when its keys are depressed, activating an Action (music), action mechanism where hammers strike String (music), strings. Modern pianos have a row of 88 black and white keys, tuned to a c ...

and

drum The drum is a member of the percussion group of musical instruments. In the Hornbostel–Sachs classification system, it is a membranophone. Drums consist of at least one membrane, called a drumhead or drum skin, that is stretched over a ...

s. The Korg KR-55 drum machine is used extensively. Michel Ripoche plays the

violin The violin, sometimes referred to as a fiddle, is a wooden chordophone, and is the smallest, and thus highest-pitched instrument (soprano) in regular use in the violin family. Smaller violin-type instruments exist, including the violino picc ...

on #4. Vocals featured are by

Jon Anderson Jon Anderson (born John Roy Anderson, 25 October 1944) is a British, and latterly American, singer, songwriter and musician, best known as the former lead singer of the progressive rock band Yes (band), Yes, which he formed in 1968 with bassis ...

(tracks #5 and #6), Peter Marsh (track #1), Christina and Maurizio Arcieri from the group Krisma (track #5) and

Cherry Vanilla Cherry Vanilla (born Kathleen Dorritie; October 16, 1943) is an American singer-songwriter, publicist, and actress. After working as an actress in Andy Warhol's ''Pork'', she worked as a publicist for David Bowie, before becoming a rock singer. ...

(track #4 narrative).

Composition

"I Can't Take It Anymore" is sung by Peter Marsh through a

vocoder A vocoder (, a portmanteau of ''vo''ice and en''coder'') is a category of speech coding that analyzes and synthesizes the human voice signal for audio data compression, multiplexing, voice encryption or voice transformation. The vocoder wa ...

over a deep synthesizer glissando bass and a synthesizer choir. "Memories of Green" is a slow piano-based piece with a backdrop of synthesizer sounds and bleeps from the 1978 Bambino electronic game "UFO Master Blaster Station". The piano used on this piece was a Steinway Grand piano. Its distinctive "drunk" sound was achieved with the use of an Electroharmonix Electric Mistress flanger pedal. This song was used in Vangelis' subsequent soundtrack to the 1982 film ''

Blade Runner ''Blade Runner'' is a 1982 science fiction film directed by Ridley Scott from a screenplay by Hampton Fancher and David Peoples. Starring Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young, and Edward James Olmos, it is an adaptation of Philip K. Di ...

''. "Not A Bit – All Of It" has vocals by

. "Suffocation" features vocals by Jon Anderson and a narrative in Italian, by Krisma ( Maurizio Arcieri and Christina Moser). "See You Later" has Vangelis on electric piano and staccato male atonal choir. About halfway through, there is a child narrative in French, with Anderson's vocals used in the finale.

Track listing

All songs composed and written by

. The track "Memories of Green" was later used by Vangelis in his

soundtrack A soundtrack is a recorded audio signal accompanying and synchronised to the images of a book, drama, motion picture, radio program, television show, television program, or video game; colloquially, a commercially released soundtrack album of m ...

for the 1982 film ''

''.

Personnel

* Vangelis –

synthesiser A synthesizer (also synthesiser or synth) is an electronic musical instrument that generates audio signals. Synthesizers typically create sounds by generating waveforms through methods including subtractive synthesis, additive synthesis and ...

s and all instruments *

– vocals on "Suffocation" and "See You Later" *

, Andrew Hoy – vocals on "Not a Bit – All of It" * Michel Ripoche – violin on "Not a Bit – All of It"

Production

* Vangelis : Producer, arranger, photography, design * Raphael Preston, John Walker : Engineers * Raine Shine : Studio assistant * Veronique Skawinska, Alwyn Clayden : Design, photography

References

External links

''See You Later''
at Vangelis Lyrics

at Vangelis Collector Site {{Authority control 1980 albums Vangelis albums Polydor Records albums