MIKE OLDFIELD

Taurus series continue.

Here the situation is the same as with Platinum and especially QE2 - the musicianship and songwriting are not pleasant for me. For me to like this album (and the previous two by MO) means to like Abacab, Genesis or Invisible Touch by Genesis; Big Generator, Talk or Open Your Eyes by Yes; Head First or Equator by Uriah Heep. All these options are impossible for my. This have to receive 2 stars, because it's not awful and contains any music.

Taurus 2 is the sequel to Taurus I, but it's little worse, because it contains some illogical transitions between the main themes. Instead of this, Taurus 2 is the best song on the album Five Miles Out. The other songs are almost pure and poor pop music full of some electronic and new wave (of low quality) sounds. Again we have a soup of different, inappropriate genres and ideas. 2 stars (I'm not sure if the 2 stars are full)

Continuing decline with synths.

What a pity for such a musician like Mike Oldfield! QE2 is something like a soup of different sounds being introduced by Mike Oldfield. Unsuitable mixture of genres and especially ideas and instruments. The music sounds very... (I would say) meatless. The musicianship almost lacks here. The songwriting is subordinated to the past albums of MO and draws it's sensation from these past ideas. There isn't any intensity of the sound. All songs aren't memorable, except the first one - Taurus 1. The folk influence have transformed into amateur new wave music. I'm trully surprised with this high rating of the album. Obviously, there are enough people to like it. For me it's just an album in my collection! 2 stars.

Decline begins

Yes, decline begins, but no, this is not compilation album instead of the name - Platinum. I think this name doesn't suits good for this album, except the first song Airborne - the best and the sole significant track on the album. The second song - Platinum, is first Mike Oldfield's commercial single and last reasonable on the album. After that it is followed by mediocre song after mediocre song. This album is the first touch of MO with pop, disco and so on. His attempts are fairly not the best examples of these genres. Except all these negative thoughts, there is worse - From this album on, most albums consist of very bad reconstructed old ideas of Mike. It means making money without fair labour! The biggest example of that is Punkadiddle. Airborne and Platinum doesn't help the album of passing the 2,5 stars verge!

Continues exploring progressive music.

Mike Oldfield makes a little well-deserved break after Ommadawn. He comes back with this huge epic album called Incantations after 3 years of absence from releasing new works. This album looks like absolutely to Tales from Topographic Oceans in its structure. In its quality it is not so different to TFTO, too. It's not just the last very good album for long time being made by Mike Oldfield, but it is even the last somewhat good Mike Oldfield's album for long time. As a tradition for his contemporary progressive rock musicians and bands he got into a long crisis in 1980. It's unique how so much bands and musicians fell apart namely in the year of 1980, with the beginning of the 80s (with awful releases).

If we speak about this one, it is far from awful. I mean it is one of the best MO albums. He continues exploring progressive rock music with strong folk influence as he did it before. This time he uses four epics over 15 minutes and it works. It's full of passion and ideas, and contains a lot of instruments appropriate for the realization of the project. The music is charming and beautiful, but I give 4 stars, instead of 5. I have to explain why...

Really the music is charming and beautiful, and when I listened to this album for the first time I said uau!!! After that with some new listenings the albums begins to show its flaws. The most important are two. The first one being frequently repetitions and the second one being extremely spreaded musical ideas. I think this flaws are ordinary for so long album consisted of four so long songs. And yet I'm staying in front of superb album. 4+ stars

The best Mike Oldfield's original work.

If you look at my rating system, you'll find out I have ranked two Mike Oldfield albums with the maximum rating - 5 stars. But they aren't original works, but revisited works of debut album called Tubular Bells - The Orchestral Tubular Bells and Tubular Bells II. That's what I mean when I say Ommadawn is Mike Oldfield's best original work. It's very well balanced album with extremely saturated sound and tunes in some of its parts. It;s another step forward after beautiful Hergest Ridge. It's a beautiful mixture between electronic and folk music - new technologies and old traditions in one. The best part of the album is the denouement at the end of the first part, when all ideas come together and create unique harmony. For this moment 5 stars, for the rest of the album 4 stars. Overall: 4,25 stars!

This sounds great, isn't it?

I was speaking about this album in my Tubular Bells review. This time everything is fine. Not just fine, but magnificent! With his 1973's work in my opinion Mike Oldfield doesn't show his full potential as a musician. Here all mistakes with the prodiction and the musicianship of the previous version of the album are fixed. This stands as polished version of Tubular Bells. In my opinion the first album should be preformed by a band, in order to produce high quality album. Despite the success of Tubular Bells, it's not balanced very well. Mike Oldfield felt it and made a masterpiece this compositions deserve. He doesn't use a band as I said, but an orchestra and make unforgettable classic album from the progressive-flavoured debut album. Besides perfect songwriting we have already known, The Orchestral Tubular Bells contains perfect production and (comprehensibly for The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra) perfect musicianship. 5 stars!

Little time, but big progress!

Despite the little time from the release of the debut, Mike Oldfield shows big progress about making solid albums. The first of them is Hergest Ridge. One of the main moments about this album is the fact, that folk influence on the album is much more increased, especially with celtic folklore, than in Tubular Bells. The conception and the ideas are developed much more precise, than in its predecessor. The production of the sound is professional in all the aspects, including some of my favourite - volume of the sound, gradual raise in drama until it reaches its peak at the end of the second part, saturated sound and the presence of a lot of optic angles of understanding music. 4 stars.

Unpolished potential masterpiece.

There is very much to be said about this album. It's the beginning of one significant career in the world of multi-instrumentalist musicians. Tubular Bells remains the most well-known album by Mike Oldfield, but it's quite far from his best works. I'd grown up with its successor - Tubular Bells II and it is one of my all-time favourite albums and the best of Mike Oldfield. So I've decided to hear it's famous predecessor and I'm truely not impressed.

These two albums are very similar in terms of songwriting as the names show, but the biggest difference come when we speak about the musicianship and the production of the album. If they are perfect in Tubular Bells II, in Tubular Bells they are just amateur. It is not so surprising for a debut album of musician - debutant, who want to play all the instruments on the record. This album contains the biggest variation between songwriting and musicianship in favour of songwriting I've ever heard.

So, it's time for my main thesis of this review - if this album was preformed by a band (for example - Supertramp) it would be just unique... Mike Oldfield probably came to this conclusion only two years later and materialize this obligatory project with The Orchestral Tubular Bells. he do this not with a rock band, but with an orchestra - just a fantasy...

Recommended for crossover prog fans, but I advise you - just try the orchestral version and you won't regret. For now 3 stars.

"Mike Oldfield's twelfth studio album "Amarok" reunited him with Tom Newman,the producer who had contributed to Mike's first album "Tubular Bells".The creation of "Amarok" was also similar to that of "Tubular Bells".Instead of using computers,Mike played almost everything by hand,using over 30 acoustic stringed and percussion instruments.The kaleidoscope of sound also includes Paddy Moloney of the CHIEFTAINS playing his uillean pipes,Zulu percussionists,a Margaret Thatcher impersonation by comedienne Janet Brown and the sounds of Mike himself brushing his teeth and stomping around the studio". That was from the liner notes.Oldfield himself considered this album as sort of a Ommadawn II.In fact looking around the "Net" this is the hightest rated album since "Ommadawn". I honestly don't understand why.I am a Mike Oldfield fan but after many listens this still sounds like a mixed up mess to me.Actually Easy Livin says it well in calling this "...weak and disjointed". Finnforest's review is very enlightning and i certainly agree with his thoughts and rating. The enjoyable moments are few and far between for me.3 stars.

New age space music in the literal sense

Here we have the perfect soundtrack for a film about drifting through space on a ship. Or perhaps for shots taken by the Hubble telescope. Or perhaps just relaxing in your home with some background music. "The Songs of Distant Earth" is Mike Oldfield composing an album in honor of Arthur C. Clarke, whose work has inspired Mike greatly. It also marks perhaps his closest successful embrace of new age music to date.

With a flowing suite of songs that sound exactly like the album cover makes you think it will--either cover, there are two different ones--tSoDE is a soft and serene journey to the great blue expanse of space. Titles like "In the beginning," "Supernova," "First Landing," and "Ascension" all give you the correct idea of where you are heading. Gentle keyboard and effects-laden guitar textures aplenty wash over you and float you away, to the low key programmed beats in the background. The melodies are dreamy and spacelike, with Mike's expressive guitar playing as good as it always is, if significantly toned down in aggression content. Mostly his playing is just pleasant and calming and "ice-blue" if one wants to describe sound with color. Various vocals provide similarly calming, meditative chants and wordless heavenly choirs along with sampled extracts from Apollo 8 and self-hypnosis tape. Children's voices and adult spoken words can be heard from time to time, as if they are calling one from afar. The whole experience is one that is fairly unique. I love some of the simple piano leads that drop here and there, which to me represents simple humanity in the sea of stars and space themes. From a "prog-rock" standpoint the album could be pretty disappointing to old time Mike fans, as mentioned this is a much different album than those from the 70s. It does not quite reach the emotional and interesting heights of the superb TB3 which came a few years later, but it is good for the subset of fans who appreciate new age music.

For the consistency and obvious effort Mike put into the project, for the beautiful vocals and guitar, I can give this 3 stars. But it is not a title I turn to often and mainly only when looking for something very relaxing to play in the background.