CRISES

The first weak Mike Oldfield album appeared in the 80s'. "Crises" consists in one 20 minutes long progressive piece and five short pop rock songs. The record has its moments, but sounds mainly cheesy and marks the artist's decline in the aforementioned decade.

The self-title epic starts well with a quite pleasant electronic atmosphere, to go on with energetic catchy and pulsing guitars. The first third of the song is impeccable. No problem with that. After things go worth... The rest of the tune is rather lazy and flat. Then arrives the inevitable soppy ballad "Moonlight Shadow", and a track featuring Jon Anderson on vocals, "In High Places", which seems to search itself but unfortunately does not succeed. "Foreign Affair" contains pretty interesting passages and an enjoyable melody. The next song, "Taurus 3", is flamenco-oriented but fails to really lift off. The disc concludes with its best track, the rocking and pounding "Shadow On The Wall".

The new track from the VL 2262 release, "Mistake", lasts not very long but is really catchy and truly rocks!

Crises is an uneven release from Mike Oldfield. It's a pity because good passages are worth the listen, but a large portion of the disc is below average.