condition (record/cover): NM / NM  Vangelis on Deutsche Grammophon? The yellow label's decision to release Invisible Connections in 1985 must have caused some boardroom consternation, but the gamble made aesthetic sense. This isn't the Vangelis of Chariots of Fire or Blade Runner, all triumphant brass and weeping synthesizers. This is something far stranger: electronic music reaching toward the chamber tradition, toward Ligeti's micropolyphonies and Xenakis's stochastic clouds.

The three pieces here ("Invisible Connections," "Atom Blaster," "Thermo Vision") abandon melody almost entirely in favor of texture, mass, movement. Vangelis builds walls of synthesized sound that behave like orchestras glimpsed through fog, and the production (pristine, spacious, very DG) emphasizes the music's quasi-classical aspirations. Critics who dismissed Vangelis as a mere soundtrack merchant never heard this record. It's the missing link between European electronic pop and the serious avant-garde, proof that the Greek autodidact understood Penderecki as well as he understood the Billboard charts.

Not an easy listen, not a crowd-pleaser. Which is exactly why it matters.