Blade Runner: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack is the soundtrack for Ridley Scott's 1982 science-fiction noir film Blade Runner, composed by Greek electronic musician Vangelis. It has received acclaim as an influential work in the history of electronic music and one of Vangelis's best works.^[3] It was nominated in 1983 for a BAFTA and Golden Globe for best original score. The score evokes the film's bleak futurism with an emotive synthesizer-based sound,^[4] drawing on the jazz scores of classic film noir^[5] as well as Middle Eastern texture and neo-classical elements.^[1]

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Quick Facts Blade Runner: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack, Film score by Vangelis ...

Blade Runner: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
Film score by Vangelis
Released	June 6, 1994
Recorded	December 1981 – April 1982
Studio	Nemo Studios, London
Genre	Electronic[1] new-age[2] ambient[2]
Length	57:39
Label	East West (Europe) / Atlantic (USA)
Producer	Vangelis
Vangelis chronology
1492: Conquest of Paradise (1992) Blade Runner: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (1994) Foros Timis Ston Greco (1995)

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The official release of the soundtrack was delayed for over a decade. The first 1994 release omitted much of the film's score and included compositions not used in the film.^[3] A 25th anniversary edition released in 2007 included further unreleased material and a disc of new music inspired by the film. Various bootleg recordings containing more comprehensive versions of the score, as well as superior sound quality to the original 1994 release, have widely circulated.^[6]

An orchestral rendition of the soundtrack was released in 1982 by the New American Orchestra, but disowned by both Vangelis and director Scott.^[6]

Vangelis recorded, mixed and produced the score for Blade Runner in his London recording space Nemo Studios in 1982. He crafted the score on an ad-hoc basis by viewing videotapes of scenes from the film in the studio, and then improvising pieces in synchronisation with the images on the screen.^[7] He also applied the use of some foley techniques, using synthesisers to produce diegetic and non-diegetic sounds. The album features vocals from Demis Roussos and saxophone by Dick Morrissey on "Love Theme". The track "Memories of Green" from Vangelis' 1980 album See You Later was also used.^[8]

The most prominent synthesiser used in the score was the Yamaha CS-80, which can be prominently heard in the opening scenes. Other synthesisers employed by Vangelis included four Roland instruments: the ProMars, the Jupiter-4, the CR-5000 drum machine, and the VP-330 Vocoder Plus; a Sequential Circuits Prophet-10;^[9] a Yamaha GS1 FM synthesizer; and an E-mu Emulator sampler. A Steinway grand piano, a Yamaha CP-80 electric grand and a modified Fender Rhodes were also used. He also utilised a variety of traditional instruments, including, gamelan, glockenspiel, gong, snare drum, timpani and tubular bells.^[10]

The delays and poor reproductions of the Blade Runner score led to the production of many bootleg recordings over the years. A bootleg tape surfaced in 1982 at science fiction conventions and became popular, given the delay of an official release of the original recordings. In 1993 "Off World Music, Ltd." created a bootleg CD that would prove more comprehensive than Vangelis' official CD in 1994. A disc from "Gongo Music" features most of the same material, but more of it. The Deck Definitive Edition came about in 2001, with 27 tracks. In 2002, the "Esper Edition" bootleg surfaced, followed by "Los Angeles, November 2019" in 2003. The double-disc "Esper Edition" combined tracks from the official release, the Gongo boot and the film itself. Finally, "2019" provided a single-disc compilation almost wholly consisting of ambient sound from the film, padded out with some sounds from the Westwood game Blade Runner.

The film score & soundtrack is widely considered as a "classic" and "genius" work of art and one of the best of all time.^[4][35][36] In 2019, Pitchfork rated it as the best film score of all time out of 50, stating "it's shocking to consider that Blade Runner did not get nominated for the Best Picture Academy Award, or any other major Oscars. Equally bewildering is the fact that Vangelis won Best Original Score for 1981's conventionally pretty Chariots of Fire, but wasn't even honorably mentioned for his far richer contributions to Blade Runner".^[37] In 2020, The Guardian included it among 10 best film soundtracks.^[38] In 2021, the "Main Titles" was rated as the greatest synth sound of all time out of 40 by Computer Music.^[39] In 2022, the Future Music magazine placed the soundtrack as 1st among "10 of the most incredible synth film soundtracks from Hollywood history".^[40]

In 2017, a sequel to Blade Runner was released, Blade Runner 2049. Hans Zimmer and Benjamin Wallfisch collaborated on the Blade Runner 2049 score, and the original Blade Runner soundtrack served as inspiration for their work. The composers included a Yamaha CS-80 analog synthesizer among the instruments in an effort to maintain stylistic continuity with Vangelis's original 1982 film score. Zimmer said of the soundtrack: "Ridley [Scott] is a hard act to follow – as is Vangelis. While Ben [Wallfisch] was four years old, I had actually experienced all of this. We watched and literally, as we stopped watching, we decided on the palette. We decided this wasn't going to be an orchestral thing. The story spoke to us."^[41] The sequel score includes a fairly faithful remake of the original "Tears in Rain" (retitled "Tears in the Rain") and borrows many musical cues from the original Vangelis score throughout, including its frequent use of pitch bending.