LIKE EARS IN RAIN

Listening for the first time to The New American Orchestra’s 1982 version of the original Vangelis score for Blade Runner on WEA Records earlier (apparently disowned by the composer and director), an irony instantly occurred to me. The idea that, for whatever reason, most likely money, the original Vangelis electronic score didn’t receive an official release back in the early ’80s, and was instead replicated by The New American Orchestra under the direction of Jack Elliott, seemed strangely apt, given that the central theme of Philip K. Dick’s Blade Runner is the difficulty of distinguishing what is real from what isn’t (humans versus robot ‘replicants’). The actual Vangelis soundtrack didn’t receive an official release until 1994, twelve years after the film’s debut in 1982.

It must have been odd for fans of the movie back in 1982 to come home with what looked, for all intents and purposes, like an official copy of the soundtrack, only to find themselves doubting their human ears as they heard a far more dinner jazz-style imitation—a musical replicant, if you will.

What makes The New American Orchestra’s version so easily distinguishable from Vangelis’s score is the all-too-human warmth in the way the instruments are played, far from the haunting electronic dystopia of Vangelis and his Yamaha CS-80. It sounds like the soundtrack to a late-night detective TV show by way of John Barry. All it needed to complete its seedy, cocktail-lounge ambience was a guest appearance from Kenny G on sax, though to be fair, Tom Scott (famous for playing sax on Bernard Herrmann’s Taxi Driver score) is pretty unbeatable at delivering an impassioned, bright-neon sound for the love theme.

Reading the comments under some of the YouTube uploads of this imitation soundtrack is intriguing. Half the listeners seem appalled by this replicant soundtrack, while the others are enraptured by memories of this counterfeit jazz orchestra version, many explaining that it was their first encounter with the music, often falling asleep to it late at night.

I can see that. This is the twinkly-Christmas-lights version of Blade Runner. It might not be the critic’s choice, but it reaches an unsuspecting part of the human heart that the original doesn’t quite touch—the uncritical area, when your defences are down and all you want is that sweet sugar hit from a discount chocolate bar that almost looks like the real thing, but isn’t.

And there’s a novelty in noting the divergences in orchestration and the way certain key moments are played, which makes for a fascinating listen, fascinating in a way such comparisons with recent AI recreations wouldn’t be. These were no doubt top-tier session musicians who probably had a couple of weeks to lay down the tracks for this soundtrack copycat, and it has that indefinable human essence of being up against the clock that proves it’s real, not artificial.

It’s a bit, I suppose, like listening with ears in rain, to paraphrase Rutger Hauer’s Nexus-6 combat model replicant in his final, iconic ‘tears in rain’ speech to Harrison Ford’s Blade Runner, Deckard.

"I've seen (and heard) things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain."