'Midnight Express' (1978) original soundtrack album, produced by Giorgio Moroder and Harold Faltermeyer.
The album originally featured a very different cover, which was withdrawn in the early 1980s.
Midnight Express
The Casablanca Records & Filmworks motion-picture 'Midnight Express' (directed by Alan Parker) gave Moroder his first Academy Award - for best film score - and opened the door to a new and lucrative world of film scoring.
The film also gave him a big international hit with 'Chase' a compulsive, synthesised instrumental based on one of the film's musical themes. The full track clocked in at over eight minutes, but a radio-friendly three minute edit ensured much airplay. The single reached #48 in the UK charts.
The track was also remixed by Brian Reeves in the 1980s and it is often this lacklustre version, and not the original, which appears on compilation albums.
Other soundtrack commissions for Moroder followed and included 'American Gigolo', 'Foxes', 'Cat People', 'Scarface', 'Flashdance' 'Top Gun', 'The Never-Ending Story' and 'Metropolis', a film which so fascinated Moroder in its evocation of modernity that he bought the rights to it and recorded his own, new soundtrack.
(Tom Whitlock, a humble technician on 'Metropolis' later achieved notable success by providing Moroder with lyrics for Berlin's 'Take My Breath Away'.)