Experience Blade Runner Like You Never Have Before Through a Feature-Length Remastered Soundtrack

There is no one Blade Run­ner. Rid­ley Scot­t’s influ­en­tial “neo-noir” has appeared in sev­er­al dif­fer­ent ver­sions over the past 38 years, both offi­cial — the “direc­tor’s cut,” the “final cut,” and lest we for­get, the now-derid­ed first the­atri­cal cut — and unof­fi­cial. So has Blade Run­ner’s sound­track, the first offi­cial release of which lagged the film by about a dozen years, and even then did­n’t include all the music so inte­gral to the unprece­dent­ed aes­thet­ic rich­ness of the futur­is­tic set­ting. Then, about a dozen more years lat­er, fol­lowed an expand­ed sound­track album, which for many fans still proved unsat­is­fy­ing. In the name of com­plete­ness and son­ic fideli­ty, at least five wide­ly dis­trib­uted bootlegs have attempt­ed to fill the gap.

Now, in our 21st-cen­tu­ry age of stream­ing, we have fan-made “remas­ters” of the Blade Run­ner sound­track like the above, the 5.7‑million-times-viewed work of a user called Greendragon861. Run­ning just over one hour and 52 min­utes — near­ly the length of the var­i­ous cuts of Blade Run­ner itself — this son­ic expe­ri­ence includes, of course, the well-known elec­tron­ic pieces by com­pos­er Van­ge­lis, those that come right to mind when you envi­sion the flame-belch­ing indus­tri­al land­scape of 21st-cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les or a police “spin­ner” tak­ing to the skies. But it also incor­po­rates back­ground music, sound effects, and even snatch­es of dia­logue from the movie. The result feels a great deal like watch­ing Blade Run­ner with­out actu­al­ly watch­ing Blade Run­ner.

Despite ini­tial­ly flop­ping, at least in the West, Blade Run­ner has exert­ed an enor­mous influ­ence on oth­er art and media — indeed, on the way human­i­ty envi­sions the future — and one still spread­ing near­ly four decades lat­er. The film seems unsur­pass­able in that regard, an achieve­ment cred­itable to a range of cre­ators: direc­tor Rid­ley Scott, of course; but also Philip K. Dick, author of its source mate­r­i­al; the late Syd Mead, who as a “visu­al futur­ist” gave focus to the world’s look and feel; mod­el mas­ter Dou­glas Trum­bull, thanks in part to whom its built and mechan­i­cal envi­ron­ment has aged so well. The list goes on, and it should­n’t fail to include Van­ge­lis as well as every­one else respon­si­ble for this intri­cate sound­scape, with­out which Blade Run­ner would­n’t be Blade Run­ner, no mat­ter the cut.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Blade Run­ner Cap­tured the Imag­i­na­tion of a Gen­er­a­tion of Elec­tron­ic Musi­cians

Sean Con­nery (RIP) Reads C.P. Cavafy’s Epic Poem “Itha­ca,” Set to the Music of Van­ge­lis

The Sounds of Blade Run­ner: How Music & Sound Effects Became Part of the DNA of Rid­ley Scott’s Futur­is­tic World

Stream 72 Hours of Ambi­ent Sounds from Blade Run­ner: Relax, Go to Sleep in a Dystopi­an Future

Drone Footage of San Fran­cis­co Set to the Music of Blade Run­ner 2049

The City in Cin­e­ma Mini-Doc­u­men­taries Reveal the Los Ange­les of Blade Run­ner, Her, Dri­ve, Repo Man, and More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.