ELEMENTS - THE BEST OF (DVD)

An interesting, nearly 3-hour video collection covering the career up to Heaven's Open (91); of course all too uneven musically to be "the best of Mike Oldfield" in an artistic sense. Mostly it's music videos, but there's also a great and intimate concert performance of Tubular Bells pt 1, Mike's interview and a 'space movie' of NASA film material with music from Incantations.

Most of the 80's videos look terribly outdated as they use rather clumsy computer graphics and lack strong visual ideas. The whole Islands album is featured (not worth the effort). Earlier songs like 'Moonlight Shadow' (a romantic nocturnal video), 'Shadow on the Wall' (manic presence of Roger Chapman is all it needs) or landscape-oriented 'Wonderful Land' (what a charming eye-wink of a baby in the end) are much better. Several songs are just simple live stuff but even that's better than pretentious computer graphics - the style that starts with 'Pictures in the Dark' (85).

It's the early era of little instrumental tracks that I enjoyed the most beside TB concert. 'In Dulci Jubilo', 'Portsmouth' and 'William Tell Overture' concentrate on Mike playing various instruments but there's some nice good-humoured feel to them, both musically and visually.

Not music video art at its best, but long as it is, it surely offers many delights for friends of Oldfield's music. Best to borrow as only quite few deserve repeated viewings.