I've just decided to give this another listen. CD2 is still OK, but nowhere near as good as the original which has all the best bits. This CD clearly has all the bits considered not good enough for the original album.

But I mainly wanted to listen to CD3 has it had taken a bit of a hammering from you guys. I have to say this is a really good CD with the exception of two tracks. Track 10 Spotkanie Z Matka is Vangelis at his absolute best. This track is easily, IMO, the best piece of music I have heard from him for years. I would recommend giving it another listen if you've already decided to shelve it.

Well I must be in a minority here ! I love this CD set entirely - the Extra's on disc 2 are what ive been waiting for since the release of the first official CD was put out, but disc 3 - absolutely fantastic, a real return to the scene in atmospherics.

I'd almost lost faith in Vangelis releasing another 'great' cd after all the soundtrack and orchestral/choral releases, but htis has renewed faith.
I even took the chance on the new ElGreco CD and really liked that as well.

Welcome to the minority. as for the others.

I have a rather poor quality (downloaded ) copy of what I think is the Esper Edition. I like that a lot, but I ordered the anniversary edition nonetheless...

If there is anyone here who can point me towards a better copy than the one I have now, or has an original copy of the Esper Edition who wishes to share can PM me if they want.

I finally managed to lay my hands on a good download version of The Esper Edition. As it turns out, all previous versions I have downloaded through the years calling themselves Esper Edition are fakes.

Oh, and before the anti-download lobbyists start sharpening their knives again: I have bought a copy of almost every album that Mr. Papathassiou released over the years, except the overly self-indulgent, commercial rubbish (this is my opinion, btw...) he made in the late 80's and 90's.

The 2nd CD of the new release of Blade Runner has music on it that didn't make it to The Esper Edition, so I suspect that most of it is "previously unreleased" aka "leftovers".

In some cases, leftovers are added to promote an album for the n'th time (a common practise on remasters), and when you listen to them, it becomes painfully obvious why these tracks didn't make it to the album in the first place.

Not so in the case of this anniversary edition. Vangelis was at an artistic peak when he did Blade Runner, and the leftovers are so good that it becomes clear how brilliant the original album is.

Anyway, I'm very glad that I finally found the best bootleg version of them all, and I will probably be playing it just as much as the official version.