THE COMPLETE MIKE OLDFIELD

Certainly as far as disc two is concerned, the rather arbitrary extraction of 4 to 8 minute segments from Oldfield's first four albums is to say the least unsatisfactory. The whole appeal of "Tubular Bells", "Ommadawn" etc, is that they are complete pieces. At worst, it would just about be acceptable to include one of the sides from each album, but the selections here are far too random and ill thought out. It seems strange that with around 150 minutes of time being available on a 2 disc set, the curtailing of these extracts results in this collection running for only 110 minutes.

The album is split into four well defined sections. Part one, "The instrumental section" would be better titled "The short instrumentals intended as singles section". Part two, "the vocal's section" includes some of Oldfield's well know singles such as the excellent "Moonlight shadow" and "To France" which are greatly enhanced by the vocals of Maggie Reilly.

The album extracts fall within "The complex section", while the final "Live section" contains four unreleased (in live format) pieces. For me, sticking to the studio versions would have been better.

Oldfield's music from the period covered here was generally of an exceptionally high quality. Disc one is worthwhile as it collates his singles output well. Disc two on the other hand is something of a travesty committed by the compilers.

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