This piece: 'Conquest of Paradise' is a cover from Vangelis, and most people would know it as a theme track for the movie “1492”.

In 2002, John Styles and his former co-writer / composer Jaap, began to create another arrangement for this song in Germany, but were never able to complete and release it, as Jaap became very ill. From the moment this song was released by Vangelis (1992), Jaap and I wanted to convert it as a duet Orchestral / Band effort, and we even wanted to create solo guitar tracks for it, to run along with The Orchestra at the end. However, John and Jaap were unable to completely finish it.

This song thus stayed on the shelf to be re-discovered and picked up again, and in 2013, because Jaap is no longer with us, both John and Matt started building on the very first ideas / tracks which had been started in 2002 in Germany.

As a result of this new beginning, 'The Orchestra' felt inspired and wanted to play this song as a part of their curriculum, entailing a rebirth and rearrangement of what had already been started by John and Jaap in 2002.  We hoped to join forces so that the band 'Euphoriqa' and 'The Orchestra' could play together as one, utilising the skills and techniques of orchestral and synth-style music. We hope that we have managed to achieve this in the way intended.

In the beginning of this song, 'Euphoriqa' keeps the lead of the song, and 'The Orchestra' is supposed to come in (at around 2:20), and they both join together again as one at the end part in a wonderful crescendo. The volumes of this version, were deliberately premastered on a massive scale, because we did not want this song to end up sounding like and released by others like a remix.

Unfortunately, due to little studio availability and practise time for members of  'The Orchestra', we all decided only last Friday (6-9-13), to pre-release this song to share with you, as a 'Euphoriqa' release, and then to continue this duet further at a later stage.  Thus, what you are listening to now is still a WIP [Work in Progress], and other members of 'Euphoriqa' will also contribute more with additional guitar solos.

Irrespective, what you hear now brings us great pride and inspiration to continue working on it further and to share with you. Because this version is still a WIP, and may not be of the quality that many have come to expect from us, or perhaps what we even aimed for, we achieved this in such a small amount of time, that we are very proud of what we have accomplished so far.   

I only wish that my former co-writer / composer, Jaap, was here now to enjoy working further on this latest version, but I know he would have loved it very much. Thus,  I would also like to dedicate this piece, 'Conquest of Paradise' to my dear friend Jaap. 

We all hope that you will enjoy our first duet version of 'Conquest of Paradise', and we would like to thank the members and the director of “http://soundcloud.com/the-orchestra” for inspiring us to finish this piece. We had a lot of fun making it.

Again, any feedback is more than appreciated as we continue on this journey as this song evolves.

Composer: Vangelis (Evangelos Odysseas Papathanassiou)
Arrangements: John Styles
Orchestral movements: John Styles, Matt Baker & The Orchestra
Synth, Percussion, Brass section, Piano and Choir: Matt Baker & John Styles
Guitars (WIP): Ralf Reichelt & John Styles
Producer and mastering: John Styles

Euphoriqa - Conquest of Paradise

Euphoriqa is a band formed by 4 talented musicians combining each his own specialty and skills to create music like Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin Queen etc., but they also experiment with other music styles, and wont limit themselves to any specific music.
To answer some of the questions we already recieved, everything you hear, we play, record and sing ALL tracks ourselves.

Members are:

John Styles  http://soundcloud.com/onevision-crossworlds
Matt Baker  http://soundcloud.com/matbaker1970
Ralf Reichelt  http://soundcloud.com/bingzhu
Hemmo Riihelä  http://soundcloud.com/age-r

We collaborated with:

Paul Simpson
Andreas Hoffmann  http://soundcloud.com/a-live-music-project

They’re formed with a mutual goal, they like to call “The Quest”

They’re not only making covers, but they will also compose and write originals.

They hope you’ll enjoy their music just as much as they do making it.

More details and news will follow shortly.